Meissen tea bowl and saucer
date: label: date made
content: ca 1730-1735
label: date made
content: 1730-1735
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen tea bowl and saucer
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
label: Description
content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: Cup: H. 2⅛" 5.4cm; D: 5⅝" 14.3cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Tea bowl and saucer
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1730-1735
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: 1984.1140.34ab
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 1232ab
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 and “K” in underglaze blue.
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: William H. Lautz, New York, 1962.
label: Description
content: This tea bowl 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 tea bowl and saucer are fluted, but otherwise simple in their form. Decorated in underglaze blue, onglaze iron-red, and gold, the pattern is in the Japanese Imari style, but bears similarity to the Chinese Imari imitations after the Japanese originals that entered production in China in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. A flower vase in the center of the saucer, a common motif in Imari designs, is encircled by a wide band with boughs of chrysanthemums, camelias and peonies. Flowers extend their stems outside the circle and around the exterior of the tea bowl.
label: Description
content: Japan traded Arita porcelains to the Dutch during the second half of the seventeenth century when Chinese porcelain production at the manufacturing center of Jingdezhen ceased following the turmoil that occurred on the fall of the Ming Dynasty in 1644. Once production in Jingdezhen resumed no time was lost in challenging the Japanese market with less expensive Chinese imitations in the Imari style, so much so that the Japanese trade more or less collapsed in the middle of the eighteenth century. The Saxon Elector and King of Poland, Augustus II, held examples of Japanese and Chinese Imari in his porcelain collection at the Japanese Palace in Dresden, and the Meissen Manufactory produced designs that were very close imitations of East Asian originals, or independent designs based on Chinese and Japanese prototypes. Augustus 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: On Japanese Imari porcelain 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, pp.233-238. See also Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 244-260.
label: Description
content: For a similar saucer to the one seen here and for more details on this type of pattern see Weber, J., 2013, Meissener Porzellane mit Dekoren nach ostasiatischen Vorbildern: Stiftung Ernst Schneider in Schloss Lustheim, Band II, S. 93-94.
label: Description
content: Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 192-193.
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: 1984.1140.34ab
label: catalog number
content: 1984.1140.34ab
label: accession number
content: 1984.1140
label: collector/donor number
content: 1232ab
objectType: label: Object Name
content: bowl, tea
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: Imari (overall style)
label: Measurements
content: bowl: 2 1/8 in; 5.3975 cm
label: Measurements
content: saucer: 5 5/8 in; 14.2875 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall tea bowl: 2 1/8 in x 3 3/4 in; 5.3975 cm x 9.525 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall saucer: 1 1/4 in x 5 7/8 in; 3.175 cm x 14.9225 cm