Meissen tea bowl and saucer (part of a service)
date: label: date made
content: 1750-1760
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen tea and coffee service (incomplete)
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
label: Description
content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: Coffeepot and cover: H. 9¼" 23.5cm; Cream jug and cover: H. 5⅜" 13.7cm;
label: Description
content: Teapot and cover: H. 4½" 11.4cm; Rinsing bowl: H. 3⅜" 8.5cm;
label: Description
content: Sugar bowl and cover: H. 4¼" 10.8cm; Cup and saucer (468): Cup: H. 2¾" 7cm,
label: Description
content: Saucer: D. 5¼" 13.3 cm; Cup and saucer (469) Cup: H. 1¾" 4.5cm,
label: Description
content: Saucer: D. 5¼" 13.3cm;
label: Description
content: Tea bowl and saucer: Bowl: H. 1¾" 4.5cm; Saucer: D. 2¾" 7cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Tea and coffee service
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1750-1760
label: Description
content: SUBJECT:
label: Description
content: Art
label: Description
content: Domestic Furnishing
label: Description
content: Industry and Manufacturing
label: Description
content: CREDIT LINE: The Hans Syz Collection
label: Description
content: ID NUMBER: 61.69 A-H
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 462-470 A-H
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; “W” in purple on most pieces (painter’s mark); various impressed numbers (2,4,24,53,59,64,66).
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1944.
label: Description
content: This tea bowl and saucer is from a tea and coffee service in 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: All the items from this tea and coffee service have elaborate overglaze polychrome rococo cartouches of vines, scrolls, and trellises framing harbor scenes with accessory figures at work on or near the water, and pastoral scenes featuring the elegant so-called “Watteau” figures. Sources for enamel painted harbor scenes and landscapes came from the vast number of prints after paintings by Italian, Dutch, and Flemish masters of the seventeenth century that formed a major part of Meissen’s output from the early 1730s until the 1760s. The Meissen manufactory accumulated folios of prints, about six to twelve in a set, as well as illustrated books and individual prints after the work of many European artists, especially the work of Jan van Goyen (1596-1656) and Jan van de Velde (1593-1641). Here the idealized landscapes and harbor scenes form the setting through which the nobility and landed gentry walk, ride, and take their ease, surveying their possessions removed from the formality of the court. In the early 1740s the manufactory began to acquire a collection of copperplate engravings on which the Meissen painters based their “Watteauszenen” (Watteau scenes), and they became so much in demand that eleven painters were appointed to specialize in work on this theme. Meissen used the shapes of the pieces in this service many times with some variation on details like handles, spouts, and finials.
label: Description
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.
label: Description
content: The “W” painted in purple possibly refers to the painter’s mark of Johann Benjamin Wentzel (or Wenzel 1696?-1765) who appears in the Meissen records as a painter of “landscapes and views” in 1750.
label: Description
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 Dutch landscape painting and prints see Gibson, W. S., 2000, Pleasant Places: The Rustic Landscape from Bruegel to Ruisdael.
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. 334-335.
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
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content: Art
label: See more items in
content: Domestic Furnishings
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Dr. Hans Syz
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CE.61.69Hab
label: catalog number
content: 61.69Hab
label: accession number
content: 240074
label: collector/donor number
content: 470
objectType: label: Object Name
content: bowl, tea
label: Object Name
content: saucer
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: blue (saucer color)
label: Physical Description
content: blue (tea bowl color)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome (component surface decoration color name)
label: Physical Description
content: landscapes with figures (joint piece description of decoration)
label: Physical Description
content: landscapes with figures (overall description of decoration)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic, porcelain, hard-paste (saucer material)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic, porcelain, hard-paste (tea bowl material)
label: Measurements
content: overall cup: 1 11/16 in x 2 7/8 in; 4.28625 cm x 7.3025 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall saucer: 1 in x 4 3/4 in; 2.54 cm x 12.065 cm