Meissen plate
date: label: date made
content: ca 1740-1745
label: date made
content: 1740-1745
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen plate
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content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
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content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
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content: MEASUREMENTS: D. 9¼" 23.5cm
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content: OBJECT NAME: Plate
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content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1745
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content: SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
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content: Art
label: Description
content: Domestic Furnishing
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content: Industry and Manufacturing
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content: CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
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content: ID NUMBER: 62.844
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content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 373
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content: ACCESSION NUMBER:
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content: (DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
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content: MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “16” impressed.
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content: PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1943.
label: Description
content: This plate 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 plate has a shallow relief pattern of floral spays known as “Gotzkowsky raised flowers” (erhabene Blumen). Painted in overglaze enamels where the relief pattern is absent are German flowers (deutsche Blumen). European flowers began to appear on Meissen porcelain in about 1740 as the demand for Far Eastern patterns became less dominant and more high quality printed sources became available in conjunction with growing interest in the scientific study of flora and fauna. For German flowers Meissen painters referred to Johann Wilhelm Weinmann’s publication, the Phytantoza Iconographia (Nuremberg 1737-1745), in which many of the plates were engraved after drawings by the outstanding botanical illustrator Georg Dionys Ehret (1708-1770). The more formally correct German flowers were superseded by mannered flowers (manier Blumen), depicted in a looser and somewhat overblown style based on the work of still-life flower painters and interior designers like Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer (1636-1699) and Louis Tessier (1719?-1781), later referred to as “naturalistic” flowers. Gold painting and polishing was the work of another division of specialists in the Meissen manufactory.
label: Description
content: Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky (1710-1775) and his brother Christian Ludwig opened a business for the sale of luxury goods in Berlin in 1730, and are recorded in 1737as having business dealings with the Meissen Manufactory. Gotzkowsky was the Prussian court’s representative at the annual Leipzig Fair and in 1761 he founded the Royal Porcelain Manufactory (Königliche Porzellan Manufaktur) in Berlin. An outstanding entrepreneur, banker, art dealer and merchant until ruined by bankruptcy in 1763, Gotzkowsky was one of the first businessmen to commission a table service from the Meissen Manufactory. Originally modeled by Johann Friedrich Eberlein (1695-1749) in 1741, the pattern marks a break with the formality of the basket weave designs, and it was used for the table service made as a gift for Empress Elizabeth of Russia in 1744.
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content: The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Flower painters were usually paid less than workers who specialized in figures and landscapes, and most painters received pay by the piece rather than a regular wage. In the late eighteenth century flower painters were even busier and consumer preference for floral decoration on domestic “china” continues into our own time, but with the exception of a manufactory like Meissen, where hand painting is still practiced, most floral patterns are now applied by transfers and are not painted directly onto the porcelain.
label: Description
content: On the Gotzkowsky relief pattern see Reinheckel, G., 1968, ‘Plastiche Dekorationsformen im Meissner Porzellan des 18 Jahrhunderts’ in Keramos, 41/42, Juli/Oktober, p. 76-77.
label: Description
content: On graphic sources for Meissen porcelain see Möller, K. A., “Meissen Pieces Based on Graphic Originals” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp.85-93; Cassidy-Geiger, M., 1996, ‘Graphic Sources for Meissen Porcelain’ in Metropolitan Museum Journal, 31, pp.99-126.
label: Description
content: On Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky and his Berlin porcelain enterprise see Baer, W., Baer, I., Grosskopf-Knaack, S., 1986, Von Gotzkowsky zur KPM: aus der Frühzeit des friderizianischen Porzellans.
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content: On the painting division at Meissen see Rückert, R., 1990, Biographische Daten der Meißener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts, pp. 134-136.
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content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection, pp. 364-365.
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
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Dr. Hans Syz
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CE.245497.12
label: catalog number
content: 245497.12
label: accession number
content: 245497
label: collector/donor number
content: 373
objectType: label: Object Name
content: plate
label: Object Type
content: plate
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: blue (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome (overall surface decoration color name)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic, porcelain, hard-paste (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 9 1/4 in; 23.495 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 1 1/2 in x 9 3/8 in; 3.81 cm x 23.8125 cm