Meissen cup and saucer: one of a pair
date: label: date made
content: ca 1723-1725
label: date made
content: 1723-1725
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen pair of chinoiserie cups and saucers
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
label: Description
content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: Cups: H.3⅛" 8cm; Saucers: D.5⅜" 13.7cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Pair of cups and saucers
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1723-1725
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: 1981.0702.15Aa,b;Ba,b
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 680Aa,b;Ba,b
label: Description
content: ACCESSION NUMBER:
label: Description
content: (DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
label: Description
content: MARKS: “13”in gold (gold painter’s mark).
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: Hans E. Backer, London, England, 1947. Ex. Coll. E.L. Paget
label: Description
content: This pair of cups and saucers 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 chinoiserie style belongs to the distinctive period in Meissen’s history that began in 1720 with the arrival from Vienna of Johann Gregor Höroldt (1696-1775). Höroldt brought with him superior skills in enamel painting on porcelain, and 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. 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: The beaker-shaped cups and saucers have enamel painted chinoiseries framed by gold, purple luster, and two shades of iron-red scrollwork. Gold scrollwork runs in a band on the interior rims of the cups and saucers. Chinoiserie figures sit, stand or kneel on a dais while birds and large insects flutter above their heads.
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.
label: Description
content: Meissen tea and coffee services of this early period were often sent as gifts to members of European royalty favored by the Saxon and Polish courts. They served as tokens of loyalty and affection to relatives in other royal houses with family connections to the Saxon House of Wettin.
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: On gift-giving see Cassidy-Geiger, M., 2008, Fragile Diplomacy: Meissen Porcelain for European Courts 1710-1763.
label: Description
content: Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 68-69.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: Germany
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
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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: 1981.0702.15Bab
label: catalog number
content: 1981.0702.15Bab
label: accession number
content: 1981.0702
label: collector/donor number
content: 680Bab
objectType: label: Object Name
content: cup
label: Object Name
content: saucer
label: Object Name
content: Tea Bowl and Saucer
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: chinoiserie (overall style)
label: Physical Description
content: gold (saucer color)
label: Physical Description
content: gold (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: cup: 3 1/8 in; 7.9375 cm
label: Measurements
content: saucer: 5 3/8 in; 13.6525 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall cup: 3 3/16 in x 2 7/8 in; 8.0645 cm x 7.3025 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall saucer: 7/8 in x 5 5/16 in; 2.2225 cm x 13.5255 cm