Meissen stand
date: label: date made
content: 1730-1735
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen underglaze blue stand
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
label: Description
content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: D. 8⅝" 22cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Stand
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: ca. 1730-1735
label: Description
content: SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
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: 1984.1140.04
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 235
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 “K” in underglaze blue (possibly the underglaze blue painter Johann David Kretschmar (1697-1765).
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: Minerva Antiques, New York, 1943.
label: Description
content: This stand 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 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 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: This stand held a small three-footed tureen and cover (the tureen was broken in transit), and has in addition to the underglaze blue pattern of flowers derived from a Chinese prototype, a band of overglaze enamel painting depicting four crayfish. Originally the crayfish were mistaken for lobsters.
label: Description
content: Several versions of this model exist with different overglaze enamel patterns. For an example of the stand complete with its tureen see Maureen Cassidy-Geiger The Arnhold Collection of Meissen Porcelain1710-1750 (New York and London: The Frick Collection and D. Giles Ltd. 2008) p. 480.
label: Description
content: Underglaze blue painting requires skills similar to a watercolor artist. There are no second chances, and once the pigment touches the clay surface it cannot be eradicated easily. Many of Meissen’s underglaze blue designs were, and still are, “pounced” onto the surface of the vessel before painting. Pouncing is a long used technique in which finely powdered charcoal or graphite is allowed to fall through small holes pierced through the outlines of a paper design, thereby serving as a guide for the painter. “Pouncing” also ensured a relative standard in patterns repeated on Meissen tea and dinner services.
label: Description
content: On 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.
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. 228-229.
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
label: See more items in
content: Art
label: See more items in
content: Domestic Furnishings
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1984.1140.04
label: catalog number
content: 1984.1140.04
label: accession number
content: 1984.1140
label: collector/donor number
content: 235a
objectType: label: Object Name
content: plate
label: Object Name
content: stand
label: Object Name
content: Stand
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: underglaze blue and overglaze enamels (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: after Far Eastern prototypes (overall style)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 8 5/8 in; 21.9075 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 1 3/16 in x 8 9/16 in; 3.01625 cm x 21.74875 cm