Meissen rinsing bowl
date: label: date made
content: ca 1740-1745
label: date made
content: 1740-1745
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen rinsing bowl
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
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content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
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content: MEASUREMENTS: H.3⅛" 8.5cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Rinsing bowl
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1740-1750
label: Description
content: SUBJECT:
label: Description
content: 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: 1987.0896.14
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 452
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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 undeglaze blue; “St” in gold (painter’s mark); “18” impressed.
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1944.
label: Description
content: This rinsing 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 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 subjects painted in polychrome enamels on this bowl were based on the large number of prints after paintings by Dutch artists 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 Dutch artists, especially Jan van Goyen (1596-1656), Jan van de Velde II(1593-1641), and Johann Wilhelm Baur (d.1640). Meissen painters often based their images on imaginary landscapes by Dutch artists, and were encouraged to use their imagination to ensure that their work was unique to each porcelain piece in a set of vases, a table or tea and coffee service.
label: Description
content: The painting represents a continuous scene encircling the exterior of the bowl in which handsomely dressed so-called “Watteau” figures appear at rest on the banks of a river with their dog nearby, a man on horseback approaches along a path while a figure can be seen walking behind him. On the river a man and a woman are ferried to the opposite side. As the scene continues around the bowl a village appears in the distance and a man sits at rest beside the road. Subjects like this were symptomatic of the nobility’s idealized projection of their persons into a pastoral context that was perceived to be a site of simplicity and picturesque tranquility free of the obligations imposed by court society. At the same time it was a statement of land ownership where the privileged surveyed their possessions from their position of advantage?
label: Description
content: The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Flower and fruit painters were paid less than workers who specialized in figures and landscapes, and most painters received pay by the piece rather than a regular wage. On-glaze gold decoration was the work of specialist gold painters and polishers.
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content: Rinsing bowls were used to dispense with tea and coffee dregs before refilling cups or tea bowls with fresh liquid.
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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. On Dutch landscape painting see Gibson, W. S., 2000, Pleasant Places: The Rustic Landscape from Bruegel to Ruisdael.
label: Description
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. 308-309.
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: Industry & Manufacturing
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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: 1987.0896.14
label: catalog number
content: 1987.0896.14
label: accession number
content: 1987.0896
label: collector/donor number
content: 452
objectType: label: Object Name
content: bowl, rinsing
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: "gold" (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: blue (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome enamels and gold (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: rural landscape with figures (overall style)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 3 3/8 in; 8.5725 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 3 5/8 in x 7 in; 9.2075 cm x 17.78 cm