Meissen plate
date: label: date made
content: ca 1735
label: date made
content: 1735
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen plate
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
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content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
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content: MEASUREMENTS: D. 8⅝" 21.3cm
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content: OBJECT NAME: Plate
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content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1735
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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: 74.136
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content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 1149
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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: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; two impressed circles, former’s mark (Johann Gottlieb Kühnel 1702?-1774).
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content: PURCHASED FROM: William H. Lautz, New York, 1961.
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content: This plate 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 design on this plate, with two small red and blue dragons, one perched on bamboo, and the other flying above a stylized flowering tree, has a symmetry that suggests a Meissen variation on original Japanese Kakiemon patterns (see Pietsch, U., 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: the Wark Collectionfrom the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, p.266). Japanese Kakiemon designs that feature real and imaginary animals and birds are typically asymmetrical and less crowded than this example (see ID# 1983.0565.41 which is a copy of a Japanese prototype).
label: Description
content: Kakiemon is the name given to very white (nigoshida meaning milky-white) finely potted Japanese porcelain made in the Nangawara Valley near the town of Arita in the North-West of the island of Kyushu. The porcelain bears a characteristic style of enamel painting using a palette of translucent colors painted with refined assymetric designs attributed to a family of painters with the name Kakiemon. In the 1650s, when Chinese porcelain was in short supply due to civil unrest following the fall of the Ming Dynasty to the Manchu in 1644, Arita porcelain was at first exported to Europe through the Dutch East India Company’s base on the island of Dejima in the Bay of Nagasaki. The Japanese traded Arita porcelain only with Chinese, Korean, and Dutch merchants and the Chinese resold Japanese porcelain to the Dutch in Batavia (present day Jakarta), to the English and French at the port of Canton (present day Guangzhou) and Amoy (present day Xiamen). Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, obtained Japanese porcelain through his agents operating in Amsterdam who purchased items from Dutch merchants, and from a Dutch dealer in Dresden, Elizabeth Bassetouche.
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content: The Meissen painter captured the playful character of Japanese animals both real and imaginary, a trend that emerged in popular illustrated literature of the Japanese Edo period and found outlets in the decorative arts.
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content: On the Japanese Kakiemon style and its influence on European porcelain see Ayers, J., Impey, O., Mallet, J.V.G., 1990, Porcelain for Palaces: the fashion for Japan in Europe 1650-1750; Impey, O., Jörg, J. A., Mason, C., 2009, Dragons, Tigers and Bamboo: Japanese Porcelain and its Impact in Europe, the Macdonald Collection; Takeshi Nagataki, 2003, Classic Japanese Porcelain: Imari and Kakiemon.
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content: On animal symbolism see K. M. Ball (1927 and 2004) Animal Motifs in Asian Art; Foster, M.D., 2009, Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai.
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content: On the impact of Chinese porcelain in a global context see Robert Finlay, 2010, The Pilgrim Art: Cultures of Porcelain in World History.
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content: On Johann Gottlieb Kühnel see Rückert, R., 1990, Biographische Daten der Meissener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts, p. 117.
label: Description
content: Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection, pp. 146-147.
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: 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
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Dr. Hans Syz
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CE.74.136
label: catalog number
content: 74.136
label: collector/donor number
content: 1149
label: accession number
content: 315259
objectType: label: Object Name
content: plate
label: Object Type
content: plate
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: blue (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome (overall surface decoration color name)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic, porcelain, hard-paste (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 8 3/8 in; 21.2725 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 1 in x 8 1/2 in; 2.54 cm x 21.59 cm