Meissen coffee pot and cover
date: label: date made
content: 1725-1735
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen coffeepot and cover
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
label: Description
content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: H. 7¾" 19.7cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Coffeepot
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1725-1735
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: 69.81 a,b
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 660
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; “ .+.” impressed former’s mark.
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: Hans Backer, London, England, 1947.
label: Description
content: This coffeepot and cover 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 coffeepot and cover are quatrefoil in horizontal section and have alternating panels of white and purple luster. Painted in the white panels are leopard-like creatures under blue bamboo and flowering vines in the Japanese Kakiemon style. Within the purple luster panels small reserves in white contain birds perched on branches and the luster is painted over with a gilt trellis pattern. The signature Japanese Kakiemon motif usually depicts a tiger with bamboo, but on this Meissen version the animal’s spots suggest a leopard which might have been the Meissen painter’s choice or an export design originating in Arita, Japan. A spotted leopard-like feline can be seen cavorting with tigers in the early encyclopedia of Tekisai Nakamura, the Kinmōzuii of 1666 (http://record.museum.kyushu-u.ac.jp/kinmou/nk156.html). Japan has no wild tigers or leopards and images of these creatures came from China. In the Kakiemon-style of painting these wild creatures assumed a stylized and more playful aspect with the bamboo represented as an abstracted reference to their Asian mainland habitat.
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 Dejima in the Bay of Nagasaki. The Japanese traded Arita porcelain only with Chinese, Korean, and Dutch merchants through the island of Dejima, 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 there and at the annual Leipzig Fair, and from a Dutch dealer in Dresden, Elizabeth Bassetouche.
label: Description
content: On Kakiemon porcelain see Impey, O., Jörg, J. A., Mason, C., 2009, Dragons, Tigers and Bamboo: Japanese Porcelain and its Impact in Europe, the Macdonald Collection; see also Takeshi Nagataki, 2003, Classic Japanese Porcelain: Imari and Kakiemon, and Ayers, J., Impey, O., Mallet, J.V.G., 1990, Porcelain for Palaces: the Fashion for Japan in Europe 1650-1750.
label: Description
content: On animal symbolism see K. M. Ball (1927 and 2004) Animal Motifs in Asian Art.
label: Description
content: Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 124-125.
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: CE.69.81ab
label: catalog number
content: 69.81ab
label: accession number
content: 287702
label: collector/donor number
content: 660ab
objectType: label: Object Name
content: coffeepot
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: purple luster, gold, polychrome enamels (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: Kakiemon (overall style)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 734 in; 1864.36 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 7 1/2 in x 4 7/8 in x 3 3/4 in; 19.05 cm x 12.3825 cm x 9.525 cm