Meissen cup and saucer
date: label: date made
content: ca 1745
label: date made
content: 1745
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. 1⅞" 4.8cm; Saucer: D. 5½" 14cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Cup and saucer
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1740-1745
label: Description
content: SUBJECT:
label: Description
content: 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: 1987.0896.21 a,b
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 263 a,b
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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; “20” in gold; “63” impressed on saucer.
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1944.
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: Elaborate scroll cartouches in gold and black frame the subjects painted in overglaze enamel on this cup and saucer. The cup has a man riding a horse toward the viewer through a rural landscape. The saucer shows an elegant couple walking away from the viewer through a village with their dog attracted by something to their right. Generally identified as Watteau figures after the French painter Jean Antoine Watteau (1685-1721) and followers like Jean Baptiste Pater (1695-1736), and Nicholas Lancret (1690-1743), these subjects have an attenuated relationship to their work. The couple stroll through a village reminiscent of Dutch and Flemish artists as they approach a windmill to their left with a church spire in the distance, and the Meissen manufactory accumulated a large resource of prints after the works of such artists as Jan van Goyen (1596-1656), Jan van de Velde (1593-1641), and Johann Wilhelm Baur (d.1640). The subjects on this cup and saucer owe as much to Dutch or Flemish precursors as they might do to Watteau, and they represent the attraction of the idealized landscape as an escape from the formality of court or confined city life. Meissen painters did not always copy directly from the prints made available to them, they adapted the compositions and took ideas from more than one source, and this was expected of them. It was often the case that a Meissen landscape painter and a figure painter had their own specialist input to the decoration of one piece. Scattered German flowers (deutsche Blumen ) are painted on the white areas outside the cartouches.
label: Description
content: Scattered German flowers (deutsche Blumen ) and insects are painted in overglaze enamels on the white areas outside the cartouches.
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content: The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Enamel painters specializing in landscapes and subjects with figures 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.
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content: Ornamental gold painting was the work of another specialist.
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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. On seventeenth-century Dutch art see Gibson, W.S., (2000) Pleasant Places: the rustic landscape from Bruegel to Ruisdael; Goddard, S.H., (1984) Sets and Series: prints from the Low Countries, exhibition catalog, Yale University Art Gallery.
label: Description
content: On the painting division at Meissen see Rückert, R., 1990, Biographische Daten der Meissener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts, pp. 134-136.
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 320-321.
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: 1987.0896.20ab
label: catalog number
content: 1987.0896.20ab
label: accession number
content: 1987.0896
label: collector/donor number
content: 263
objectType: label: Object Name
content: cup
label: Object Name
content: saucer
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome enamels and gold (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: genre scenes and German flowers (overall style)
label: Measurements
content: cup: 1 7/8 in; 4.7625 cm
label: Measurements
content: saucer: 5 1/2 in; 13.97 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall cup: 1 7/8 in x 4 in x 3 1/8 in; 4.7625 cm x 10.16 cm x 7.9375 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall saucer: 1 1/8 in x 5 1/4 in; 2.8575 cm x 13.335 cm