Meissen tankard (Hausmaler)
date: label: date made
content: ca 1730
label: date made
content: 1730
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen tankard (Hausmaler)
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
label: Description
content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: 5¾" 14.6 cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Tankard
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1730, Meissen
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: 1987.0896.40
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 953
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 in blue on unglazed base.
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: Blumka Gallery, New York, 1957. Ex. Coll. Dr. Hermann Freund.
label: Description
content: This tankard 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 Germany, 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 tankard was made in the Meissen manufactory but painted outside by an independent artist. There is no cover on this piece. Hausmalerei is a German word that means in literal translation ‘home painting’, and it refers to the practice of painting enamels and gold onto the surface of blank ceramics and glass in workshops outside the manufactory of origin. Beginning in the seventeenth century the work of the Hausmaler varied in quality from the outstanding workshops of Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Breslau (now Wroclaw in Poland), to the less skilled efforts of amateur artists. Early Meissen porcelain was sought after for this purpose, and wealthy patrons of local enameling and gilding workshops purchased undecorated porcelain, often of out-moded or inferior quality, which was then enameled with subjects of their choice. Hausmalerei was at first acceptable to the early porcelain manufactories like Meissen and Vienna, and Meissen sent blank porcelain to Augsburg workshops for decoration, but as the market became more competitive they tried to eradicate the practice. It was a temptation for Meissen porcelain painters to take on extra work as Hausmaler to augment their low pay, and the manufactory cautioned or imprisoned them if Hausmalerei activity was suspected or discovered.
label: Description
content: The tankard has an allegorical subject painted in the style of Hausmaler Hans Gottlieb von Bressler of Breslau who painted on porcelain for his own pleasure in the style of his teacher, the well-known Hausmaler Ignaz Bottengruber, also of Breslau. Count von Bressler became mayor of Breslau in 1766.
label: Description
content: It is not clear what the allegory on this tankard depicts. The authors of the Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection suggest that the map represents the partition of Poland-Lithuania, but that process did not begin until 1772, well after Bressler was active as a Hausmaler.The subject may refer to the events of the Northern Wars with Sweden. Poland-Lithuania had already surrendered Kiev and land east of the river Dnieper to Russia in 1686, and in 1709 the Battle of Poltava was the point at which Swedish power in Northern Europe declined and Peter the Great began to establish Russian dominance in the Baltic region; a move that had serious consequences for Poland-Lithuania leading to the late eighteenth-century partitions that brought the commonwealth to an end. As King of Poland the Saxon Elector Augustus II was drawn into the Northern Wars against Sweden that finally ended in 1721, followed by the War of Polish Succession that broke out after his death in 1733. The allegory could also refer to the later Silesian wars of the early 1740s in which Poland lost territory to Prussia, and therefore painted by a Hausmaler at a later date.
label: Description
content: For comparison see a tankard in the Victoria and Albert Museum: http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O334523/tankard-bressler-hans-gottlieb/
label: Description
content: On Hausmaler see Ulrich Pietsch, 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: The Wark Collection from The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, pp. 43-46; Pazaurek, G. E., 1925, Deutsche Fayence und Porzellan Hausmaler.
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 516-517.
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
label: See more items in
content: The Hans C. Syz Collection
label: See more items in
content: Meissen Porcelain: The Hans Syz Collection
label: See more items in
content: Art
label: See more items in
content: Domestic Furnishings
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Dr. Hans Syz
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1987.0896.40
label: catalog number
content: 1987.0896.40
label: accession number
content: 1987.0896
label: collector/donor number
content: 953
objectType: label: Object Name
content: tankard
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: blue underglaze (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: Hausmaler (overall style)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 5 3/4 in; 14.605 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 5 3/4 in x 6 in x 4 1/16 in; 14.605 cm x 15.24 cm x 10.31875 cm