Meissen tea bowl and saucer
date: label: date made
content: 1725-1735
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; two small incised crosses (former’s mark).
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1943.
label: Description
content: This tea bowl and saucer 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: Meissen’s chinoiserie period began in the 1720s following the arrival from Vienna of Johann Gregor Höroldt (1696-1775) who brought with him superior skills in enamel painting on porcelain. His highly significant contribution to Meissen was to develop a palette of very fine bright enamel colors that had so far eluded the team of metallurgists at the manufactory, and that were new to onglaze enamel colors on faience and porcelain in general.
label: Description
content: The tea bowl and saucer are painted with chinoiseries in the style associated with Johann Ehrenfried Stadler (1701-1741) who worked for Peter Eggebrecht’s Dresden faience manufactory before employment at Meissen. His work is associated with figures that stand, run or trot along fenced terraces carrying fans, kites or parasols beside exuberant flowers and foliage. On the saucer a man walks in a garden carrying a parasol, and on the tea bowl a man runs carrying a fan with an exotic bird flying overhead. Diaper and foliate patterned borders circle the interiors of the pieces.
label: Description
content: Chinoiserie is from the French Chinois (Chinese) and refers to ornamentation that is Chinese-like. The style evolved in Europe as Chinese luxury products began to arrive in the West in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries through the major European trading companies. Artisans were quick to incorporate motifs from these products into their work and to imitate their material qualities, especially the Chinese lacquers, embroidered silks, and porcelains, but their imitation was not informed by first-hand knowledge of China or an understanding of Chinese conventions in two-dimensional representation, and instead a fanciful European vision emerged to become an ornamental style employed in garden and interior design, in cabinet making, faience and porcelain manufacture, and in textiles. Illustrated books began to appear in the second half of the seventeenth century that describe the topography of China, its peoples and their customs, and these sources were copied and used by designers, artists, printmakers, and artisans including Johann Gregor Höroldt at Meissen. Application of the term chinoiserie to this class of Meissen porcelains is problematic, however, because Johann Gregor Höroldt developed his ideas from a variety of sources and referred to the “chinoiseries” as “Japanese” (Japonische) figures, an early modern generic term for exotic artifacts and images imported from the East.
label: Description
content: On Johann Gregor Höroldt see Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 17-25.
label: Description
content: On chinoiserie see Impey, O., 1997, Chinoiserie: the Impact of Oriental Styles on Western Art and Decoration; on the porcelain trade and European exposure to the Chinese product see the exhibition catalog by Emerson, J., Chen, J., Gardner Gates, M., 2000, Porcelain Stories: from China to Europe
label: Description
content: Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection, pp. 90-91.
label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen chinoiserie tea bowl and saucer
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
label: Description
content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: Tea bowl: H. 1¾"4.5cm, Saucer: D. 4⅝" 11.8cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: tea bowl and saucer
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1725-35
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: 76.365 a,b
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 283
label: Description
content: ACCESSION NUMBER:
label: Description
content: (DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
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
label: See more items in
content: The Hans C. Syz Collection
label: See more items in
content: Meissen Porcelain: The Hans Syz Collection
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content: Art
label: See more items in
content: Domestic Furnishings
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Dr. Hans Syz
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CE.76.365ab
label: catalog number
content: 76.365ab
label: accession number
content: 1977.0166
label: collector/donor number
content: 283ab
objectType: label: Object Name
content: bowl, tea
label: Object Name
content: saucer
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: blue (saucer color)
label: Physical Description
content: blue (tea bowl color)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome (component surface decoration color name)
label: Physical Description
content: garden scenes with figures (joint piece description of decoration)
label: Physical Description
content: garden scenes with figures (overall description of decoration)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic, porcelain, hard-paste (saucer material)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic, porcelain, hard-paste (tea bowl material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: bowl: 1 3/4 in; 4.445 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: saucer: 4 5/8 in; 11.7475 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall tea bowl: 1 7/8 in x 3 in; 4.7625 cm x 7.62 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall saucer: 1 in x 4 5/8 in; 2.54 cm x 11.7475 cm