Meissen cup and saucer
date: label: date made
content: ca 1725-1730
label: date made
content: 1725-1730
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: 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: 1983.0565.30 ab
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 50 ab
label: Description
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; “//” incised on cup.
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1941.
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 onglaze enamel pattern painted on this simple cup and saucer was adapted by Meissen painters from a Japanese prototype in the Dresden royal collection. Known as the “rock and chrysanthemum” pattern it has, typically, a branch of heavy chrysanthemum blooms arching upwards from behind a rock with grasses and ferns around it. Animating the composition on the saucer is a colorful bird. Japanese painters of the Edo period were highly sensitive observers of nature, but in the porcelains exported to Europe the laws of natural growth were often abandoned in the interests of making the product more attractive to European sensibilities, largely under the influence of Dutch traders.
label: Description
content: Kakiemon is the name given to very white (nigoshida meaning milky-white) finely potted Japanese porcelain made in the Nangawara Valley near the town of Arita in the North-West of the island of Kyushu. The porcelain bears a characteristic style of enamel painting using a palette of translucent colors painted with refined assymetric designs attributed to a family of painters with the name Kakiemon. In the 1650s, when Chinese porcelain was in short supply due to civil unrest following the fall of the Ming Dynasty to the Manchu in 1644, Arita porcelain was at first exported to Europe through the Dutch East India Company’s base on the island of Dejima in the Bay of Nagasaki. The Japanese traded Arita porcelain only with Chinese, Korean, and Dutch merchants and the Chinese resold Japanese porcelain to the Dutch in Batavia (present day Jakarta), to the English and French at the port of Canton (present day Guangzhou) and Amoy (present day Xiamen). Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, obtained Japanese porcelain through his agents operating in Amsterdam who purchased items from Dutch merchants, and from a Dutch dealer in Dresden, Elizabeth Bassetouche.
label: Description
content: For a detailed account of the Kakiemon 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. See also Impey, O., Jörg, J. A., Mason, C., 2009, Dragons, Tigers and Bamboo: Japanese Porcelain and its Impact in Europe, the Macdonald Collection and Takeshi Nagataki, 2003, Classic Japanese Porcelain: Imari and Kakiemon.
label: Description
content: For more examples and details about this pattern and its variations see Weber, J., 2013, Meissener Porzellane mit Dekoren nach ostasiatischen Vorbildern: Stiftung Ernst Schneider in Schloss Lustheim, Band II, S. 208-220.
label: Description
content: For a similar design on an octagonal-shaped two-handled cup and a saucer see Pietsch, U., 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: the Wark Collection from the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, p.302.
label: Description
content: Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 178-179.
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
label: See more items in
content: The Hans C. Syz Collection
label: See more items in
content: Meissen Porcelain: The Hans Syz Collection
label: See more items in
content: Art
label: See more items in
content: Domestic Furnishings
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1983.0565.30ab
label: catalog number
content: 1983.0565.30ab
label: accession number
content: 1983.0565
label: collector/donor number
content: 50ab
objectType: label: Object Name
content: cup
label: Object Name
content: saucer
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: blue underglaze (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome (overall surface decoration color name)
label: Physical Description
content: kakiemon (joint piece style)
label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome enamels (overall color)
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 5/8 in x 3 3/4 in x 2 3/4 in; 6.6675 cm x 9.525 cm x 6.985 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall saucer: 1 3/16 in x 5 1/8 in; 2.9845 cm x 13.0175 cm