Meissen two-handled bowl (Hausmaler)
date: label: date made
content: ca 1740
label: date made
content: 1740
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen two-handled bowl (Hausmaler)
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
label: Description
content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: L. (over handles) 6" 15.3 cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Bowl
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
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content: DATE MADE: 1730-1740 Meissen
label: Description
content: SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
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content: Art
label: Description
content: Domestic Furnishing
label: Description
content: Industry and Manufacturing
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content: CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
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content: ID NUMBER: 73.178
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content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 274
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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 underglaze blue.
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content: PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1943.
label: Description
content: This 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.
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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 Germany, 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 bowl, which should have a cover, was made in the Meissen manufactory but painted outside by an independent artist. Hausmalerei is a German word that means in literal translation ‘home painting’, and it refers to the practice of painting enamels and gold onto the surface of blank ceramics and glass in workshops outside the manufactory of origin. Beginning in the seventeenth century the work of the Hausmaler varied in quality from the outstanding workshops of Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Breslau (now Wroclaw in Poland), to the less skilled efforts of amateur artists. Early Meissen porcelain was sought after for this purpose, and wealthy patrons of local enameling and gilding workshops purchased undecorated porcelain, often of out-moded or inferior quality, which was then enameled with subjects of their choice. Hausmalerei was at first acceptable to the early porcelain manufactories like Meissen and Vienna, and Meissen sent blank porcelain to Augsburg workshops for decoration, but as the market became more competitive they tried to eradicate the practice. It was a temptation for Meissen porcelain painters to take on extra work as Hausmaler to augment their low pay, and the manufactory cautioned or even imprisoned them if Hausmalerei activity was suspected or discovered.
label: Description
content: The so-called Watteau scenes (Watteauszenen) cover a large group of objects produced entirely within the Meissen Manufactory as well as those painted outside. The paintings of Claude Gillot (1673-1722) Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) and Nicholas Lancret (1690-1743), all of whom worked in Paris, introduced the elegiac fête galante, scenes of languid and amorous pursuits in lush parkland settings, often featuring figures from the Italian Comedy. These artists in particular established a highly successful genre that was reproduced in prints and adapted for enamel painting by many of the porcelain manufactories and Hausmaler in the mid-eighteenth century.
label: Description
content: This bowl, and originally its cover which is missing, was painted in the mid-eighteenth century with finely dressed figures playing musical instruments, probably in the workshop of Franz Ferdinand Mayer of Pressnitz, Bohemia (now Přísečnice in the Czech Republic).
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content: On Hausmaler see Ulrich Pietsch, 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: The Wark Collection from The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, pp. 43-46.
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content: On Antoine Watteau see Thomas Crow, 1985, Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris, especially chapter II; Donald Posner, 1984, Antoine Watteau.
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection, pp. 542-543.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Ceramics and Glass
label: See more items in
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: CE.73.178
label: catalog number
content: 73.178
label: accession number
content: 308538
label: collector/donor number
content: 274
objectType: label: Object Name
content: bowl
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: blue (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome (overall surface decoration color name)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic, porcelain, hard-paste (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 6 in; 15.24 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 2 3/8 in x 6 1/8 in x 4 1/2 in; 6.0325 cm x 15.5575 cm x 11.43 cm