Meissen covered pot and stand
date: label: date made
content: ca 1730
label: date made
content: 1730
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen covered pot and stand
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
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content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: Pot: H. 4" 10.2cm; D. 6¼" 15.9cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Pot and stand
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 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: 1983.0565.34 abc
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 750 abc
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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: Caduceus in underglaze blue on pot; crossed swords and a dot in underglaze blue on stand.
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1947.
label: Description
content: This cream pot and stand 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 covered pot and stand, painted in the Imari style with Indian flowers (indianische Blumen) and heavy fringes of lambrequins falling from the rims, demonstrates the use of underglaze blue painting in conjunction with polychrome overglaze enamels that is characteristic of the original Japanese Imari patterns. The shapes are European, but the pattern came from a Japanese prototype in the collections of Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland.
label: Description
content: The so-called lambrequin design likely came to Japan through porcelain imported from China where Chinese porcelain painters in turn adapted the design from the stylized lotus flower motif of Buddhist origin in Indian and Tibetan paintings and textiles. Lambrequin is a term used by Western scholars to describe the panels that are reminiscent of ornamental fringes on ceremonial textile canopies or baldechins, and it is also a term with origins in European heraldry (mantling). Eurasian cultures developed the pendant lambrequin motif to adorn interior and exterior architectural features in wood, stucco, and in textiles, often with elaborate foliate designs contained within the pendants. Interesting examples of lambrequin patterns influenced by both Chinese and European motifs can be seen on Rouen soft-paste porcelains. Lambrequin is a word of French origin first used in the 1720s.
label: Description
content: Japanese Imari wares came from kilns near Arita in the north-western region of Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost island, and were exported to Europe via the port of Imari to the island of Dejima in the Bay of Nagasaki, from where the Dutch were permitted to trade. Decorated in the Aka-e-machi, the enameling center in Arita, Imari wares are generally distinguished from those made in the Kakiemon style by the darker palette of enamel colors and densely patterned surfaces, some of which are clearly derived from Japanese and South-East Asian textiles and known in Japan as brocade ware (nishiki-de), but there are considerable variations within this broad outline.
label: Description
content: The caduceus mark (Merkurstab) on the cream pot was in use at Meissen as early as 1721-1722 and its application continued into the early 1730s. With the single serpent the mark resembles more closely the staff of the Greek healer of antiquity, Asclepius, and not the twin serpents on the winged staff of Hermes or Mercury, the winged messenger god of ancient Greece and Rome.
label: Description
content: The function of this type of object could be to hold a broth for invalids or women recovering from childbirth, or for holding thick cream or a sauce.
label: Description
content: For a detailed account of the Imari style and its European imitators see Ayers, J., Impey, O., Mallet, J.V.G., 1990, Porcelain for Palaces: the fashion for Japan in Europe 1650-1750.
label: Description
content: Rotondo-McCord, L., 1997, Imari: Japanese Porcelain for European Palaces: The Freda and Ralph Lupin Collection.
label: Description
content: For a comparable object see Pietsch, U., 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: the Wark Collection from the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, p.327, and for more examples and information about this pattern see Weber, J., 2013, Meissener Porzellane mit Dekoren nach ostasiatischen Vorbildern: Stiftung Ernst Schneider in Schloss Lustheim, Band II, S. 65-81.
label: Description
content: Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection, pp. 204-205. Note on the caduceus mark p.591.
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
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1983.0565.34abc
label: catalog number
content: 1983.0565.34abc
label: accession number
content: 1983.0565
label: collector/donor number
content: 750abc
objectType: label: Object Name
content: pot
label: Object Name
content: stand
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: underglaze blue, polychrome enamels, and gold (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: Imari (overall style)
label: Measurements
content: pot: 4 in; 10.16 cm
label: Measurements
content: stand: 6 1/4 in; 15.875 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall covered pot: 4 1/8 in x 4 1/2 in x 3 1/2 in; 10.4775 cm x 11.43 cm x 8.89 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall stand: 1 1/4 in x 6 3/16 in; 3.175 cm x 15.6845 cm