Meissen tureen and cover (Hausmaler)
date: label: date made
content: 1750-1774
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen tureen and cover (Hausmaler)
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
label: Description
content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: H. 7⅜" 18.8 cm
label: Description
content: D. 7½" 19.1 cm
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content: L. (over handles) 11½" 29.2 cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Tureen
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1750-1754, Meissen
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: 1979. 0120.08 a,b
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 687 a,b
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 in underglaze blue.
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: Hans E. Backer, London, England, 1947. Ex. Coll. F. Neuburg.
label: Description
content: This tureen 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 Germany, 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 tureen was made in the Meissen manufactory but decorated outside by an independent artist. Hausmalerei is a German word that means in literal translation ‘home painting’, and it refers to the practice of painting enamels and gold onto the surface of blank ceramics and glass in workshops outside the manufactory of origin. Beginning in the seventeenth century the work of the Hausmaler varied in quality from the outstanding workshops of Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Breslau (now Wroclaw in Poland), to the less skilled efforts of amateur artists. Early Meissen porcelain was sought after for this purpose, and wealthy patrons of local enameling and gilding workshops purchased undecorated porcelain, often of out-moded or inferior quality, which was then enameled with subjects of their choice. Hausmalerei was at first acceptable to the early porcelain manufactories of Meissen and Vienna, and Meissen sent blank porcelain to Augsburg workshops for decoration, but as the market became more competitive they tried to eradicate the practice. It was a temptation for Meissen porcelain painters to take on extra work as Hausmaler to augment their low pay, and the manufactory cautioned or even imprisoned them if Hausmalerei activity was suspected or discovered.
label: Description
content: This tureen stands outside the conventions of enamel and gold painting and was achieved by incising the glaze with a diamond-tipped tool, and then rubbing lamp black or charcoal into the incised image. Lamp black is a pigment made from carbon derived from burning vegetable matter or mineral substances; soot in other words.
label: Description
content: Canon August Ernst von dem Busch of Hildesheim (1704-1779) in Lower Saxony, North Germany, specialized in creating these images for his own pleasure. He was especially fond of scenes popular in the eighteenth century, the picturesque ruin, often included as a feature in the new fashion for the English landscape garden style in late eighteenth-century Germany. The Canon usually signed and dated his work, and the tureen is signed “Busch 1774.”
label: Description
content: On Hausmaler see Ulrich Pietsch, 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: The Wark Collection from The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, pp. 43-46, and similar examples of the Canon’s work on pp. 561-563.
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 566-567.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: Germany: Saxony, Meissen
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: 1979.0120.08ab
label: catalog number
content: 1979.0120.08ab
label: accession number
content: 1979.0120
label: collector/donor number
content: 687
objectType: label: Object Name
content: tureen
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: incised lines with lamp blacking (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: Hausmaler (overall style)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 7 7/16 in x 11 1/2 in x 8 13/16 in; 18.89125 cm x 29.21 cm x 22.38375 cm