Meissen chocolate pot and cover
date: label: date made
content: ca 1775-1800
label: date made
content: 1775-1800
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen chocolate pot and cover
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
label: Description
content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: H. 7⅛" 18.1cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Chocolate pot
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1775-1800
label: Description
content: SUBJECT: 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: 1987.0896.06 ab
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 450
label: Description
content: ACCESSION NUMBER:
label: Description
content: (DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
label: Description
content: MARKS: Crossed swords and star in underglaze blue; “83” impressed.
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1944.
label: Description
content: This chocolate pot and cover 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 chocolate pot, based on contemporary metal pots of the period, has a wooden handle mounted in a side socket and a wooden finial on the cover; wooden handles protected hands from the hot surface of the pot when filled with liquid. The finial could be removed and a swizzle stick inserted to raise froth on the hot chocolate and mix it thoroughly. The spout has a scrolled molding.
label: Description
content: Hot chocolate, one of the three hot liquors to transform European drinking and social rituals, was more expensive and laborious to prepare than coffee, but nevertheless very popular in affluent society. Usually, chocolate was taken as a breakfast drink for those who could afford such a luxury and the trembleuse cup and saucer was designed for those who took their breakfast in bed, and for invalids for whom chocolate was considered of medicinal value. Although not as numerous as coffee houses, chocolate 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 and cream.
label: Description
content: In the late eighteenth century Meissen produced various items reminiscent of the early Meissen Böttger porcelains that were admired for their raised ornament designed originally by the Dresden court goldsmith Johann Jacob Irminger (1635-1724), the so-called Irmingersche Belege. The applied grapevine (Wein-Laub) design seen on this pot and cover was especially favored.
label: Description
content: On the practice of drinking hot chocolate see Bowman, P.B., 1995, In Praise of Hot Liquors: The Study of Chocolate, Coffee and Tea-drinking 1600-1850; on the history of coffee houses see Ellis, M. 2011, The Coffee House: A Cultural History; for an exhaustive study of chocolate see Grivetti, L. E., Shapiro, H. Y., 2009, Chocolate: History, Culture, and Heritage.
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 274-275.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: 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
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content: The Hans C. Syz Collection
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content: Meissen Porcelain: The Hans Syz Collection
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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: 1987.0896.06ab
label: catalog number
content: 1987.0896.06ab
label: accession number
content: 1987.0896
label: collector/donor number
content: 450
objectType: label: Object Name
content: chocolate pot and cover
label: Object Name
content: pot, chocolate
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: white (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: vine pattern applied in relief (overall style)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 7 1/8 in; 18.0975 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 7 1/8 in x 10 3/8 in x 6 1/8 in; 18.0975 cm x 26.3525 cm x 15.5575 cm