Meissen tea caddy and cover
date: label: date made
content: 1725-1730
label: date made
content: ca 1725-1730
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen tea caddy
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
label: Description
content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
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content: MEASUREMENTS: H. 4⅛" 10.5cm
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content: OBJECT NAME: Tea caddy
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: ca. 1725-1730
label: Description
content: SUBJECT: 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: 1983.0565.02ab
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 692
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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: “28” in gold (gold painter’s number).
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content: PURCHASED FROM: Hans E. Backer, London, England, 1947.
label: Description
content: This tea caddy 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 tea caddy of a hexagonal baluster shape has six panels divided by single gold-painted flutes in which harbor scenes are painted in overglaze black enamel known as Schwarzlot; a transparent enamel painted onto the surface of the glaze and then scratched through to achieve a quality not unlike an etched and engraved print from which the Meissen painters derived many of their subjects. This caddy is painted in the style of Christian Friedrich Herold. Alternating scenes of merchants striking deals and laborers preparing cargo fill the panels, while on the lid a vignette depicts a figure sitting before two barrels.
label: Description
content: Ideas for enamel painted harbor scenes came from the large number of prints, often after paintings by Dutch masters of the seventeenth century, that formed a major part of Meissen’s output from the early 1720s 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 European artists, especially the work of Jan van Goyen (1596-1656), Jan van de Velde (1593-1641), and Johann Wilhelm Baur (d.1640). In these scenes Dutch merchants are seen conducting business with their foreign counterparts. These merchant subjects (Kauffahrtei) drew on the global trade in luxury goods and commodities from India, the Far and Near East, a trade that held high interest for the consumers of exotic goods fascinated by their origin in distant cultures.
label: Description
content: The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Enamel painters specializing in landscapes, harbor, and river scenes with staffage (figures and animals) were paid more than those who painted flowers, fruits and underglaze blue patterns. Most painters received pay by the piece rather than a regular wage or salary. On-glaze gold decoration was the work of specialist gold painters and polishers.
label: Description
content: Tea, coffee, chocolate, and sugar were luxury products for early eighteenth-century consumers, and the equipage for these hot beverages, made in silver and new ceramic materials like Meissen’s red stoneware and porcelain, was affordable only to the elite of European society. Less expensive versions for storing and preparing these products were made from various kinds of wood, from tin, from japanned materials, and in earthenware pottery. This tea caddy shape was modeled from a silver prototype in 1715 by the court goldsmith Johann Jacob Irminger (1635-1724) and remained in production until the early 1730s.
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.
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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.
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content: On tea, coffee, and chocolate equipage see Bowman, P.B., 1995, In Praise of Hot Liquors: The Study of Chocolate, Coffee and Tea-drinking 1600-1850.
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 110-111.
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: Art
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content: Domestic Furnishings
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1983.0565.02ab
label: accession number
content: 1983.0565
label: catalog number
content: 1983.0565.02ab
label: collector/donor number
content: 692ab
objectType: label: Object Name
content: caddy, tea
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: black enamel (Schwarzlot) and gold (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: harbor scenes (Kauffahrtei) (overall style)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 4 1/8 in; 10.4775 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 4 1/8 in x 3 in x 3 in; 10.4775 cm x 7.62 cm x 7.62 cm