Meissen teapot and cover
date: label: date made
content: ca 1740-1750
label: date made
content: 1740-1750
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: 4⅛" 10.5cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Teapot
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1740-1750
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: 1987.0896.05 ab
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 1216 ab
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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: A. Neuberger, New York, 1962.
label: Description
content: This teapot and cover 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: This teapot and cover with a wishbone handle and dragon spout is a later example of items reminiscent of the early Böttger porcelains admired for their raised ornament, and designed originally by the Dresden court goldsmith Johann Jacob Irminger (1635-1724), the so-called Irmingersche Belege. The applied grapevine (Wein-Laub) design seen on this teapot and cover was especially favored.
label: Description
content: In the eighteenth century tea, coffee, and chocolate was served in the private apartments of aristocratic women, usually in the company of other women, but also with male admirers and intimates present. In affluent middle-class households tea and coffee drinking was often the occasion for an informal family gathering. Coffee houses were exclusively male establishments and operated as gathering places for a variety of purposes in the interests of commerce, politics, culture, and social pleasure.
label: Description
content: For a similar example with a relief of Far Eastern flowering prunus branches, also much admired, see Pietsch, U., 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: the Wark Collection from the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, p.451.
label: Description
content: On the introduction of tea, coffee, and chocolate to European social and cultural life see Bowman, P.B., 1995, In Praise of Hot Liquors: The Study of Chocolate, Coffee and Tea-drinking 1600-1850; see also Weinberg, B.A., Bealer, B.K., 2002, The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World’s Most Popular Drug; on the history of tea see Ukers, W. H., 1935, All about Tea; on coffee houses see Ellis, M. 2011,The Coffee House: A Cultural History.
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 274-275.
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: 1987.0896.05ab
label: catalog number
content: 1987.0896.05ab
label: accession number
content: 1987.0896
label: collector/donor number
content: 1216ab
objectType: label: Object Name
content: teapot
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: white (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: vine pattern applied in relief (overall style)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 4 1/8 in; 10.4775 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 4 1/8 in x 7 1/4 in x 4 1/4 in; 10.4775 cm x 18.415 cm x 10.795 cm