Meissen cup and saucer
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 cup and saucer
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
label: Description
content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H. 2⅝" 6.7cm; Saucer: D. 5" 12.8cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Cup and saucer
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1740-45
label: Description
content: SUBJECT:
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: 1987.0896.10ab
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 120ab
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content: ACCESSION NUMBER:
label: Description
content: (DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
label: Description
content: MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “95” impressed on cup; “61” impressed on saucer.
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1942.
label: Description
content: This cup and saucer 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 cup and saucer have solid gold grounds on their interior surfaces, and in white reserves there are waterside landscape scenes with figures. The Meissen painters generally based their images on prints after the numerous landscapes, real and imaginary, painted, etched, and engraved by seventeenth-century Dutch, Flemish and French artists, and Meissen painters were encouraged to use their imagination to ensure that their work was unique to each porcelain piece in a set of vases, a snuff box, or table service. For this reason it is often impossible to trace a Meissen subject to a specific print. The popularity of these subjects eclipsed the earlier fascination with Chinese and Japanese designs and was symptomatic of the nobility’s idealized projection of their persons into a pastoral context.
label: Description
content: The scenes on the exterior of the cup and interior of the saucer represent the landowning class in a rural context. It could be assumed that the grand mansion in the background of the painting on the saucer is the home of the well-dressed couple with a child in the foreground. On the cup, in a continuous rural landscape, a man on horseback addresses a woman who has her hand on a large basket, perhaps full of fish as the river is close by. In the background we see a church surrounded by a small village.
label: Description
content: 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 (1593-1641), and Johann Wilhelm Baur (d.1640). These print series were intended to bring pleasure in viewing diverse landscape subjects that led a person on a journey or opened a window for the imagination.
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, and polishing in particular required careful handling of the porcelain because of its tendency to spring apart. On this cup and saucer the marks from polishing can be seen on the gold ground surrounding the enamel painted subjects, and they are especially clear on the saucer.
label: Description
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.
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: On Dutch landscape painting see Gibson, W. S., 2000, Pleasant Places: The Rustic Landscape from Bruegel to Ruisdael.
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 304-305.
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
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Dr Hans Syz
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1987.0896.10ab
label: catalog number
content: 1987.0896.10ab
label: accession number
content: 1987.0896
label: collector/donor number
content: 120ab
objectType: label: Object Name
content: cup
label: Object Name
content: saucer
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: blue underglaze (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: cup: 2 5/8 in; 6.6675 cm
label: Measurements
content: saucer: 5 in; 12.7 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall cup: 2 3/4 in x 3 5/8 in x 2 7/8 in; 6.985 cm x 9.2075 cm x 7.3025 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall saucer: 1 1/8 in x 5 3/16 in; 2.8575 cm x 13.1445 cm