Meissen teapot and cover
date: label: date made
content: ca 1745-1755
label: date made
content: 1745-1755
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen teapot and cover
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
label: Description
content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: H. 4⅛" 10.5cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Teapot
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1745-1755
label: Description
content: SUBJECT:
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: 1989.0715.03 a,b
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 307
label: Description
content: ACCESSION NUMBER:
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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: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1943.
label: Description
content: This teapot 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 teapot has overglaze enamel painted scenes based on the French fêtes champêtre in which a young couple dances while a man plays a woodwind instrument in one scene, and in the other a couple dances to the hurdy-gurdy. The shape of the teapot is one commonly used at Meissen in the 1740s and 1750s. The subject of the dancing couple is based on a print by Nicolas de Larmessin IV (1684-1755) after the painting by Antoine Watteau, The Marriage Contract.
label: Description
content: Before Jean Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) developed the subject of the fêtes galantes, reveries based on outdoor entertainments in private and public pleasure parks that represent youthful elite society removed from the conventions of court protocol, he painted a series of works set in the rural village. Rural life, imagined by urban elite society as an idyll of simple pleasures in pastoral surroundings, was already the subject of literature and theatrical performance. Watteau did not attempt to represent the reality of life in the country village and in the fêtes champêtre, he anticipated the search for pleasure in the lush parklands of the Paris environs, the fêtes galantes.
label: Description
content: In the early 1740s the manufactory began to acquire a collection of copperplate engravings on which the Meissen painters based their “Watteauszenen” (Watteau scenes), and they became so much in demand that eleven painters were appointed to specialize in work on this theme.
label: Description
content: The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Enamel painters specializing in landscapes and subjects with figures were paid more than those who painted flowers, fruits and underglaze blue patterns. Most painters received pay by the piece rather than a regular wage. Ornamental gold painting and polishing was the work of other specialists in the manufactory.
label: Description
content: On Antoine Watteau see Thomas Crow, 1985, Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris, chapter II, ‘Fêtes Galantes and Fêtes Publiques’, pp. 55-75. See also Sheriff, M. D., (ed.) 2006, Antoine Watteau: Perspectives on the Artist and the Culture of His Time.
label: Description
content: On the painting division at Meissen see Rückert, R., 1990, Biographische Daten der Meissener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts, pp. 134-136.
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 346-347.
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: 1989.0715.03ab
label: catalog number
content: 1989.0715.03ab
label: accession number
content: 1989.0715
label: collector/donor number
content: 307
objectType: label: Object Name
content: teapot
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome enamels and gold (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: scenes in the style of Watteau (overall style)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 4 1/8 in; 10.4775 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 4 1/4 in x 6 15/16 in x 3 13/16 in; 10.795 cm x 17.62125 cm x 9.68375 cm