Meissen bowl
date: label: date made
content: ca 1725-1735
label: date made
content: 1725-1735
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen Bowl
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
label: Description
content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: H. 3 in. 7.6cm; D. 6in. 15.3cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Bowl
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1725-1735
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: 1979.0120.05
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 1090
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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
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1959.
label: Description
content: The bowl 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 psychoanalysis 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 bowl is in the style of early Böttger porcelains designed by the Dresden court goldsmith, Johann Jacob Irminger (1635-1724), but with the mark of crossed swords in underglaze blue it was made, or finished, in or after 1725. Irminger adapted his designs for many of the Böttger red stonewares and porcelains from vessels made in silver or gold, and from cut and polished stone ornaments in the quartz family like agate, chalcedony, and jasper. The bowl featured here does not have a rim that finishes in a fine outward flare, characteristic of most Meissen bowls and tea bowls of this early period (see for comparison ID number 75.186 with applied acanthus tendrils), so its history and purpose is not entirely clear. Given the bowl's rather inferior quality, it might be a trial piece for a later porcelain body introduced in the 1720s.
label: Description
content: Laurel leaves, molded separately and applied to the bowl, rise from the foot ring, and this pattern can be seen on many examples of Böttger red stonewares and porcelains, especially the vases. Like the acanthus motif, laurel has its origins in the ornament of ancient Greece, where the plant was sacred to Apollo and used in purification rituals. More familiar perhaps is the mythical story of Apollo’s pursuit of the nymph Daphne, who not returning his passion, flees from him to her father the river god, Peneus. Rescue comes by transforming his daughter into a laurel tree.
label: Description
content: On Böttger stoneware and porcelain see Pietsch, U., 1993, Early Meissen Porcelain: a Private Collection; by the same author, 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: the Wark Collection from the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens.
label: Description
content: Zimmerman, E., 1908, Die Erfindung und Fruhzeit des Meissner Porzellans: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Keramik.
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 268-269.
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: Industry & Manufacturing
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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: 1979.0120.05
label: catalog number
content: 1979.0120.05
label: accession number
content: 1979.0120
label: collector/donor number
content: 1090
objectType: label: Object Name
content: bowl
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: white (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: in the style of Boettger porcelain (overall style)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 3 in x 6 in; 7.62 cm x 15.24 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 3 1/8 in x 6 in; 7.9375 cm x 15.24 cm