Meissen leaf dish
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 leaf dish
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
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content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: L. 10⅜" 26.3cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Leaf dish
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1740-1745
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: 1987.0896.07
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 1341
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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.
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content: PURCHASED FROM: W. H. Lautz, New York, 1963.
label: Description
content: This leaf dish 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: Molded in the shape of a large cabbage leaf, these items were fairly common in Meissen’s production. It is likely they were used during the service of dinners in the French style in which dishes were placed in a decorative manner on the table from which diners selected food for their plate. Each course was carefully designed for an impressive display, but the visual climax of the dinner was the dessert, the course in which specially designed vessels in porcelain and glass supported artfully placed fruits, sweetmeats, jellies and creams, and for which the confectioners created elaborate table decorations in sugar that were augmented by porcelain figures and centerpieces.
label: Description
content: The Meissen Manufactory produced several versions of serving vessels in the shape of fruits and vegetables, for example: melon, pomegranate, and peach-shaped teapots based on Chinese and Japanese models, asparagus boxes, a cabbage tureen (see Den Blaauwen, A. L., 2000, Meissen Porcelain in the Rijksmuseum, p.341), and the eighteenth-century table, whether furnished in silver, porcelain or faience, featured exuberant displays of flora and fauna tumbling over soup tureens and center pieces. Numerous manufactories of both porcelain and fine earthenware produced vessels in the forms of cabbages and cauliflowers, which were especially popular.
label: Description
content: On the Meissen dinner services and table decorations see Ulrich Pietsch “Famous Eighteenth-Century Meissen Dinner Services” and Maureen Cassidy-Geiger “”The Hof-Conditorey in Dresden” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 94-105; 120-131; for a wider study of court table decorations see Bursche, S., 1974, Tafelzier des Barock.
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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. 282-283.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: Germany: Saxony, Meissen
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: 1987.0896.07
label: catalog number
content: 1987.0896.07
label: accession number
content: 1987.0896
label: collector/donor number
content: 1341
objectType: label: Object Name
content: dish, leaf
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome enamels (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: cabbage leaf (overall style)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 10 3/8 in; 26.3525 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 2 3/16 in x 10 7/16 in x 8 in; 5.55625 cm x 26.51125 cm x 20.32 cm