Meissen underglaze blue tea bowl and saucer
date: label: date made
content: 1730-1740
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: MARKS: Crossed swords and “R” in underglaze blue; “4” impressed on cup; “E” impressed on saucer (former’s numbers).
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: N. Sakiel & Son, New York, 1963.
label: Description
content: This tea bowl 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 collector and 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: 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 pigment 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 originals. 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: The tea bowl and saucer have a simple floral pattern distributed regularly on their interiors. On the exterior the surface is fluted with ribs in the so-called “broken reed” pattern (gebrochener Stab), and covered with a straw-colored celadon type glaze. Meissen produced more utilitarian services like this in order to appeal to the growth of an affluent middle-class market. The fashion for oriental designs began to decrease in the 1740s in favor of European subjects, but the demand for patterns like the “onion”, “rock and bird” and the “little blue flowers” endures in various forms down to the present day.
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 or biscuit-fired 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 and maintaining a relative standard in the component parts of Meissen table 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. 262-263.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
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: Art
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content: Domestic Furnishings
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Hans C. Syz Collection
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1987.0896.03ab
label: catalog number
content: 1987.0896.03ab
label: accession number
content: 1987.0896
label: collector/donor number
content: 1277ab
objectType: label: Object Name
content: bowl, tea
label: Object Name
content: saucer
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: painted in underglaze cobalt blue; celadon-type glaze on fluted exteriors (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic; hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: bowl: 2 in; 5.08 cm
label: Measurements
content: saucer: 5 in; 12.7 cm