Meissen tea bowl (Hausmaler)
date: label: date made
content: ca 1715-1720
label: date made
content: 1715-1720
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen tea bowl (Hausmaler)
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
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content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
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content: MEASUREMENTS: 1⅞" 4.8 cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Tea bowl
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1715-1720 Meissen
label: Description
content: SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
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content: Art
label: Description
content: Domestic Furnishing
label: Description
content: Industry and Manufacturing
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content: CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
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content: ID NUMBER: 70.211
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content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 1612
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content: ACCESSION NUMBER:
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content: (DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
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content: MARKS: None. A signature in iron red on the bottom of the bowl “Bottengruber F,” is a forgery.
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content: PURCHASED FROM: The Art Exchange, New York, 1972.
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content: This tea 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 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 tea bowl was made in the Meissen manufactory but painted outside by an independent artist. 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, 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: On this tea bowl, painted in iron-red and gold in garden settings, a young woman admires her image in a mirror on one side and on the other a woman holds a bird in her right hand with a dog under her left arm. The woman with the mirror may represent vanity, and the woman with the bird in hand may represent sincerity. It is not unusual to encounter difficulty in attributing enamel and gold painting on porcelain to a specific workshop among the Augsburg Hausmaler. In this example Siegfried Ducret was of the opinion that Abraham Seuter painted the tea bowl, but in the Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection the authors attribute the work to Johann Aufenwerth’s workshop, as did Gustav Pazuarek before them in his book Deutsche Fayence-und-Porzellan Hausmaler (German Faience and Porcelain Home Painters) published in 1925. Hausmaler used the same or similar pattern books and prints for their gold and enamel painting, and in this case both the Seuter and Aufenwerth workshops used the pattern of dots and arrowheads to frame the image in a crown-shaped cartouche. They used similar sources for their subjects too; half length portraits of female figures holding flowers, mirrors, or musical instruments. At the bottom of the tea bowl's interior is a bird with outstretched wings painted in iron-red. There is a forged signature on the base of the tea bowl, “Bottengruber F”.
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content: For comparison see Ducret, S., 1973, Keramik und graphik des 18. Jahrhunderts: Vorlagen für Maler und Modelleure, Band II, pp. 44, 139.
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content: On Hausmaler see Ulrich Pietsch, 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: The Wark Collection from The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, pp. 43-46.
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp.510-511.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Ceramics and Glass
label: See more items in
content: Art
label: See more items in
content: Domestic Furnishings
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CE.70.211
label: catalog number
content: 70.211
label: collector/donor number
content: 1612
label: accession number
content: 289981
objectType: label: Object Name
content: bowl, tea
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: monochrome, red (overall surface decoration color name)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic, porcelain, hard-paste (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 1 7/8 in; 4.7625 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 1 3/4 in x 2 11/16 in; 4.445 cm x 6.82625 cm