Meissen dish: from the Stadholder Service
date: label: date made
content: ca 1763-1774
label: date made
content: 1763-1774
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen dish
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
label: Description
content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: D. 13½" 34.2cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Dish
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: ca. 1763-1774
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: 1983.0565.48
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 558
label: Description
content: ACCESSION NUMBER:
label: Description
content: (DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
label: Description
content: MARKS: Crossed swords with dot in underglaze blue; “34” impressed (former’s number); “///” incised; “Rotterdam” in black overglaze.
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1945.
label: Description
content: This dish 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 dish comes from a large dinner service that was in the ownership of Prince Willem V of Orange and Nassau (1748-1806) who was the last hereditary Stadholder, or governor, of the Dutch United Provinces including the colonies in Indonesia and South Africa. The service appears to have been a gift from the Dutch United East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie), an institution of which Prince Willem was the chief governor.
label: Description
content: The service was painted in onglaze enamels with scenes after topographical prints of sites in the Netherlands and Batavia (present day Jakarta), the Indonesian headquarters for the Dutch East India Company. The subject on this plate is Rotterdam harbor. Most of the prints that the Meissen painters copied quite faithfully were relatively contemporary eighteenth century works, many of them published in Amsterdam after drawings and paintings by artists like Cornelis Pronk (1691-1759), Jan de Beyer (1703-1785) and Abraham de Haen (1707-1748), many featuring sites associated with the Dutch East India Company including the country seats of various Company officials.
label: Description
content: Prince Willem went into exile in England in 1795 when hostilities broke out with France. It appears that he took the service with him but was obliged to sell it before he left the country. In 1823 a total of 363 pieces was sold at the auction of the William Beckford collection, but in 1868 it was sold again in 75 lots at Christie’s of London, and items can now be found in many European and North American collections.
label: Description
content: For a full account of this service see Abraham L. den Blaauwen, The Meissen Service of Stadholder Willem V, Apeldoorn and Zwolle: Palais Het Loo and Waanders Uitgevers, 1993.
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp.348-349.
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: Art
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content: Domestic Furnishings
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1983.0565.48
label: accession number
content: 1983.0565
label: catalog number
content: 1983.0565.48
label: collector/donor number
content: 558
objectType: label: Object Name
content: plate
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome enamels and gold (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: harbor scene (overall style)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 13 1/2 in; 34.29 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 2 in x 13 1/2 in; 5.08 cm x 34.29 cm