Vienna saucer and Meissen tea bowl
date: label: date made
content: ca 1750-1755
name: label: maker
content: Vienna
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Vienna saucer (with Meissen tea bowl)
label: Description
content: MAKER: Vienna Manufactory
label: Description
content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: Saucer: D. 4¾" 12.1cm.
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Saucer
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Vienna, Austria
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1750-1755
label: Description
content: SUBJECT:
label: Description
content: Art
label: Description
content: Domestic Furnishing
label: Description
content: Industry and Manufacturing
label: Description
content: CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
label: Description
content: ID NUMBER: 1983.0565.38B
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 919B
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content: ACCESSION NUMBER:
label: Description
content: (DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
label: Description
content: MARKS: Shield in underglaze blue, and “70” incised.
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: Hans Backer, London, England, 1952.
label: Description
content: This saucer, and a matching tea bowl, 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 New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry 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: The pattern on this saucer, and the matching Meissen tea bowl, is painted in overglaze enamel, purple luster, and gold. The design comes from Johann Schmischek’s (1585-1650) Groteschgen Büchlein(Little Book of Grotesques) published in Munich in 1630, and the patterns were originally designed for the ornamentation of guns, hence the hunting dog confronting a wild boar on the saucer and another dog chasing a hare on the tea bowl; Schmischek is listed as an arquebusier in contemporary catalogs which probably indicates his work as a designer of ornament for this class of weaponry. Not many Meissen pieces with this pattern exist today, and that suggests that the design was not successful or that the service was a private commission. The provenance of the saucer is further complicated by the fact that it appears to have been made in Vienna, and a sugar bowl with a Vienna mark passed through Christie’s salerooms in 2005. The saucer may have been a replacement and the sugar bowl a replacement or an addition to a Meissen service that may well have been in Vienna in the mid-eighteenth century.
label: Description
content: Experts suggest on the one hand that the decoration on the tea bowl was the work of a Hausmaler, an enamel painter outside the Meissen manufactory, or on the other hand, that the presence of purple luster indicates decoration at Meissen; purple luster was not usually seen outside the manufactory in the 1720s. It is also possible that an outside decorator could have mastered the technique of handling purple luster as this style is not typical of Meissen in the 1730s. Made in Vienna in the 1750s, the saucer has decoration applied to match the original Meissen piece.
label: Description
content: To view the Meissen tea bowl with the Vienna saucer see ID number 1983.0565.38A
label: Description
content: Two tea bowls and saucers with very similar patterns can be seen in Ulrich Pietsch, Early Meissen Porcelain: The Wark Collection from the Cummer Museum and Art Gallery (The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens and D.Giles Ltd: Jacksonville FL and London UK, 2011) p.521. Comparable items are in the collections of the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle WA; the British Museum (1955.0708.1)and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London UK (202&A-1854); the Nationalmuseum Stockholm, Sweden.
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 276-277.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: Hapsburg Empire: Austria-Hungary, Vienna
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Ceramics and Glass
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content: The Hans C. Syz Collection
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content: Industry & Manufacturing
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content: Art
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content: Domestic Furnishings
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1983.0565.38B
label: accession number
content: 1983.0565
label: catalog number
content: 1983.0565.38B
label: collector/donor number
content: 919
objectType: label: Object Name
content: saucer
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome enamels and gold (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: baroque (overall style)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 4 3/4 in; 12.065 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 13/16 in x 4 3/4 in; 2.06375 cm x 12.065 cm