Meissen milk pot
date: label: date made
content: ca 1738
label: date made
content: 1738
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen milk pot
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
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content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: H. 6⅛" 15.6cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Milk pot
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1738-1745
label: Description
content: SUBJECT: Art
label: Description
content: Domestic Furnishing
label: Description
content: Industry and Manufacturing
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content: CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
label: Description
content: ID NUMBER: 71.204.a,b
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 718
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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; impressed five-pointed star (former’s mark).
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content: PURCHASED FROM: Otto Buel, Lucerne, Switzerland, 1947.
label: Description
content: This milk pot 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: Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775) modeled the elaborate handle on this milk pot for a service commissioned by Count Heinrich von Brühl (1700-1763) in 1738, but this piece probably comes from another service for which the model for the handle was reused. The elaborate polychrome cartouches frame overglaze harbor scenes and landscapes painted in purple enamel.
label: Description
content: Sources for enamel painted harbor scenes and landscapes came from the vast number of prints after paintings by Dutch and Flemish masters of the seventeenth century that formed a major part of Meissen’s output from the early 1730s until the 1750s. The Meissen manufactory accumulated folios of prints, about six to twelve in a set, as well as illustrated books and individual prints after the work of many European artists, especially the work of Jan van Goyen (1596-1656) and Jan van de Velde (1593-1641. These subjects served to affirm a sense of national pride in the young Dutch Republic, of their long-distance trade overseas and reliance upon their waterways. The eighteenth-century aristocratic taste for these picturesque works was enjoyment of a world very different to that of the court and city, depicting people involved in trade or rustic pursuits from whom the nobility would be socially distant, but nevertheless invested with curiosity, amusement, and fascination for their social inferiors.
label: Description
content: The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Enamel painters specializing in landscapes, harbor, and river scenes with staffage (figures and animals) were paid more than those who painted flowers, fruits and underglaze blue patterns. Most painters received pay by the piece rather than a regular wage or salary. Ornamental gold painting was the work of another specialist.
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content: On graphic sources for Meissen’s painters see Möller, K. A., “’…fine copper pieces for the factory…’ Meissen Pieces Based on graphic originals” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 84-93.
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content: On the painting division at Meissen see Rückert, R., 1990, Biographische Daten der Meissener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts, pp. 134-136.
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 312-313.
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: Art
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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: CE.71.204ab
label: catalog number
content: 71.204ab
label: accession number
content: 297499
label: collector/donor number
content: 718
objectType: label: Object Name
content: jug, milk
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: blue (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: monochrome, purple (overall surface decoration color name)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 6 1/8 in; 15.5575 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 6 3/16 in x 5 1/8 in x 3 3/4 in; 15.71625 cm x 13.0175 cm x 9.525 cm