Meissen tea bowl and saucer
date: label: date made
content: ca 1740
label: date made
content: 1740
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: Tea bowl: H. 1⅝" 4.2cm; Saucer: D. 4¾" 12.1cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Tea bowl and saucer
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1740
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: 1984.1140.12 ab
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 494 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 and a dot in underglaze blue; “6” or “9” impressed.
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1944.
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: With a dense brown iron oxide-based glaze known as “dead leaf” or Capuchin brown after the habit of Franciscan Capuchin monks, the tea bowl and saucer have small reserves in which floral medallions are painted in underglaze blue, overglaze iron-red, purple, and gold. The medallions appear to float on the surface interspersed with birds and insects painted in gold. Few of these pieces exist because the Manufactory Commission considered the procedure for decorating them too costly, requiring too many kiln firings as well as gold polishing to finish the pieces.The surface treatment may have been intended to imitate Japanese lacquer work of the Edo period. The iron oxide based color was developed by Samuel Stölzel (1685-1737) in 1720 (see Pietsch below) and it is usually seen with underglaze blue patterns after Chinese prototypes (see for example ID# 1984.1140.03ab).
label: Description
content: In the eighteenth century tea, coffee, and chocolate was served in the private apartments of aristocratic women, usually in the company of other women, but also with male admirers and intimates present. In affluent middle-class households tea and coffee drinking was often the occasion for an informal family gathering and for entertaining guests. Coffee houses were exclusively male establishments and operated as gathering places for a variety of purposes in the interests of commerce, politics, culture, and social pleasure.
label: Description
content: For two more tea bowls and saucers from this service see Pietsch, U., 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: the Wark Collection from the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, p.124.
label: Description
content: Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 208-209.
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: Domestic Furnishings
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1984.1140.12ab
label: catalog number
content: 1984.1140.12ab
label: accession number
content: 1984.1140
label: collector/donor number
content: 494ab
objectType: label: Object Name
content: bowl, tea
label: Object Name
content: saucer
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: medallion and birds (joint piece description of decoration)
label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: underglaze blue, brown glaze, polychrome enamels and gold (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: east Asian / European (overall style)
label: Measurements
content: bowl: 1 5/8 in; 4.1275 cm
label: Measurements
content: saucer: 4 3/4 in; 12.065 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall tea bowl: 1 1/2 in x 2 1/2 in; 3.81 cm x 6.35 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall saucer: 1 in x 4 1/2 in; 2.54 cm x 11.43 cm