Meissen two-handled cup and saucer
date: label: date made
content: ca 1730-1735
label: date made
content: 1730-1735
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen two-handled cup and saucer
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
label: Description
content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H. 2¼" 5.7cm; Saucer: D. 4⅝" 11.8cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Two-handled cup and saucer
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1730-1735
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: 1984.1140.39 ab
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 1331 ab
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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; “//” incised on cup.
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: William H. Lautz, New York, 1963.
label: Description
content: This two-handled cup 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: The octagonal two-handled cup with saucer imitates a design on Japanese porcelain in the Kakiemon style. Reserved on iron-red grounds in alternating panels are foliate arabesques pinned with stylized flowers in gold, and on two of the white panels there are motifs of scholars’scrolls bound by ribbons resembling the Buddhist symbol for learning. The remaining white panels contain stylized lotus flowers that represent purity and perfection in Chinese Buddhist iconography, among many other meanings. Although usually identified as in the Kakiemon style the piece has elements of both Kakiemon and Imari designs.
label: Description
content: Kakiemon is the name given to very white (nigoshida meaning milky-white) finely potted Japanese porcelain made in the Nangawara Valley near the town of Arita in the North-West of the island of Kyushu. The porcelain bears a characteristic style of enamel painting using a palette of translucent colors painted with refined assymetric designs attributed to a family of painters with the name Kakiemon. In the 1650s, when Chinese porcelain was in short supply due to civil unrest following the fall of the Ming Dynasty to the Manchu in 1644, Arita porcelain was at first exported to Europe through the Dutch East India Company’s base on the island of Dejima in the Bay of Nagasaki. The Japanese traded Arita porcelain only with Chinese, Korean, and Dutch merchants, and the Chinese resold Japanese porcelain to the Dutch in Batavia (present day Jakarta), to the English and French at the port of Canton (present day Guangzhou) and Amoy (present day Xiamen). Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, obtained Japanese porcelain through his agents operating in Amsterdam who purchased items from Dutch merchants, and from a Dutch dealer in Dresden, Elizabeth Bassetouche.
label: Description
content: This particular design was much in demand in France late in the eighteenth century, and in England both the Bow and Chelsea manufactories produced versions of the pattern for tea and coffee services, possibly after Meissen’s imitations of Japanese prototypes. The foliate scroll or arabesque pattern is known in Japan as Karakusa (also called the octopus scroll and Chinese grass motif). It has its origins in plant patterns of considerable antiquity that reached Japan through China, but appear to have migrated to China from Central Asia and possibly from the eastern Mediterranean. In Japan the Karakusa pattern developed into a popular abstract motif derived from nature that is still in use today. The “octopus” connection comes from the idea that the little “feet” protruding from the stem resemble octopus suckers.
label: Description
content: On the development of Japanese Kakiemon porcelain see Ayers, J., Impey, O., Mallet, J.V.G., 1990, Porcelain for Palaces: the fashion for Japan in Europe 1650-1750, and on Kakiemon see Impey, O., Jörg, J. A., Mason, C., 2009, Dragons, Tigers and Bamboo: Japanese Porcelain and its Impact in Europe, the Macdonald Collection. See also: Takeshi Nagataki, 2003, Classic Japanese Porcelain: Imari and Kakiemon; Goro Shimura, 2008, The Story of Imari: the Symbols and Mysteries of antique Japanese Porcelain For examples of other items in this pattern see Pietsch, U., 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: the Wark Collection from the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, pp. 310-311; Weber, J., 2013, Meissener Porzellane mit Dekoren nach ostasiatischen Vorbildern: Stiftung Ernst Schneider in Schloss Lustheim, Band II, S. 145-148.
label: Description
content: Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collectio: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 200-201.
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
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1984.1140.39ab
label: catalog number
content: 1984.1140.39ab
label: accession number
content: 1984.1140
label: collector/donor number
content: 1331ab
objectType: label: Object Name
content: cup
label: Object Name
content: saucer
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: blue (cup color)
label: Physical Description
content: blue (saucer color)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome (component surface decoration color name)
label: Physical Description
content: fan (joint piece description of decoration)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic, porcelain, hard-paste (cup material)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic, porcelain, hard-paste (saucer material)
label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome enamels and gold (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: Kakiemon / Imari (overall style)
label: Measurements
content: cup: 2 1/4 in; 5.715 cm
label: Measurements
content: saucer: 5 3/4 in; 14.605 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall cup: 2 1/4 in x 4 3/4 in x 3 in; 5.715 cm x 12.065 cm x 7.62 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall saucer: 1 1/8 in x 5 1/2 in x 5 1/2 in; 2.8575 cm x 13.97 cm x 13.97 cm