Meissen chocolate pot and cover
date: label: date made
content: ca 1775 -1800
label: date made
content: ca 1750-1800
label: date made
content: 1775 -1800
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: MARKS: Crossed swords and an “8” in underglaze blue.
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: The Art Exchange, New York, 1969.
label: Description
content: This chocolate pot is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the collector and dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychoanalysis and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.
label: Description
content: The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in the German States, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.
label: Description
content: Early in Meissen’s history Johann Friedrich Böttger’s team searched for success in underglaze blue painting in imitation of the Chinese and Japanese prototypes in the Dresden collections. Böttger’s porcelain, however, was fired at a temperature higher than Chinese porcelain or German stoneware. As in China, the underglaze blue was painted on the clay surface before firing, but when glazed and fired the cobalt sank into the porcelain body and ran into the glaze instead of maintaining a sharp image like the Chinese cobalt blue painted porcelains. The Elector of Saxony and King of Poland Augustus II was not satisfied with the inferior product. Success in underglaze blue painting eluded Böttger’s team until Johann Gregor Höroldt (1696-1775) appropriated a workable formula developed by the metallurgist David Köhler (1673-1723). Success required adjustment to the porcelain paste by replacing the alabaster flux with feldspar and adding a percentage of porcelain clay (kaolin) to the cobalt pigment. Underglaze blue painting became a reliable and substantial part of the manufactory’s output in the 1730s.
label: Description
content: Meissen introduced the “strawflower” (Strohblume) pattern, a stylized design based on Far Eastern floral prototypes in about 1750. It was less expensive to produce and was popular with middle-class consumers. Much imitated by other manufactories it is now associated with the Danish Royal Copenhagen manufactory. The pattern is applied over molded ribbing which is usually found on the interior or exterior of vessels with the “strawflower”design.
label: Description
content: Hot chocolate was a luxury beverage in the eighteenth century. It was prepared by grinding imported cacao beans and melting the paste in hot water, and or milk, mixed with sugar and spices. It was then whisked to a frothy consistency by a swizzle stick, and the lid has a hole in it through which the rod of the stick could pass keeping the liquid warm while whisking. The wooden handle attached to a porcelain socket protects the hand when pouring the hot liquid into cups. Chocolate cups were made taller and slimmer in shape than tea or coffee cups, often with two handles.
label: Description
content: Hot chocolate, one of the three hot liquors to transform European drinking and social habits, was more expensive and laborious to prepare than coffee, but nevertheless very popular. Chocolate houses, like coffee houses, began to appear in European cities in the late seventeenth century. The beverage was very different to the powdered cocoa drinks of today, and was closer to its origin in the cultures of Central and South America, but made more palatable for Europeans with the addition of sugar.
label: Description
content: Bowman, P.B., 1995, In Praise of Hot Liquors: The Study of Chocolate, Coffee and Tea-drinking 1600-1850On underglaze blue painting at Meissen see Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 22-23. For an example of a very similar chocolate pot see p. 266.
label: Description
content: J. Carswell, 1985, Blue and White: Chinese Porcelain and its impact on the Western World.
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 260-261.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: Germany
label: place made
content: Germany: Saxony, Meissen
topic: label: Subject
content: Manufacturing
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Ceramics and Glass
label: See more items in
content: The Hans C. Syz Collection
label: See more items in
content: Meissen Porcelain: The Hans Syz Collection
label: See more items in
content: Art
label: See more items in
content: Domestic Furnishings
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Hans C. Syz Collection
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1987.0896.02ab
label: catalog number
content: 1987.0896.02ab
label: accession number
content: 1987.0896
label: collector/donor number
content: 1569
objectType: label: Object Name
content: pot, chocolate
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: underglaze cobalt blue (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 6 1/2 in; 16.51 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 6 1/4 in x 10 5/8 in x 6 5/16 in; 15.875 cm x 26.9875 cm x 16.0655 cm