Meissen plate
date: label: date made
content: ca 1740
label: date made
content: 1740
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen plate
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
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content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: D. 9¼" 23.5cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Plate
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1740
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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: 74.139
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 557
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content: ACCESSION NUMBER:
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content: (DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
label: Description
content: MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “16” impressed.
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1945.
label: Description
content: This plate 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 petal-shaped edge and a gold rim line the plate has a molded basket weave border in the old ozier (Alt Ozier) pattern. Painted in onglaze enamels the center of the plate contains the so-called “bee” pattern after the insects’ striped bodies (Bienenmuster). Adapted from Chinese and Japanese prototypes, the design is Meissen’s own, with three winged insects around a spray of stylized East Asian flowers tied with a ribbon that drifts above the ground.
label: Description
content: Meissen’s “Indian flowers” is a generic term for compositions of peonies and chrysanthemums as well as more fanciful designs like the “bee” pattern that bear little resemblance to known botanical or insect species. India is highly likely to be the source for this type of pattern through the printed and painted textiles that reached Japan through the Indian Ocean trade and also mediated through Chinese silks imported by the Japanese from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. India was the powerhouse for textile production in the sixteenth century and one of the principal forces behind the development of a global trade network through the seventeenth century. The Mughal emperors who ruled over most of the Indian subcontinent and Afghanistan at that time constructed beautiful gardens and encouraged the use of floral motifs in the arts and artisan trades. At first naturalistic in their representation in Mughal court painting floral designs became stylized under the reign of Shah Jahan (1628-1658)and the printed and painted cottons of later Mughal rule reflected this development.
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content: Indian textiles were prized in Japan in the early Edo period, especially in conjunction with the tea ceremony where they were used to clean, wrap and store tea making utensils.
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content: For an example of a plate with the same pattern but without the molded basket-weave relief on the rim and with a brown rim line rather than gold see Pietsch, U., 2011, Early Meissen Porcelain: the Wark Collectionfrom the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, p.250.
label: Description
content: On the textile trade in early modern Japan see Denney, J., ‘Japan and the Textile Trade in Context’ in Peck, A., (ed.) 2013, Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile trade 1500-1800, pp. 57-65.
label: Description
content: Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 174-175.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
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: CE.74.139
label: catalog number
content: 74.139
label: collector/donor number
content: 557
label: accession number
content: 315259
objectType: label: Object Name
content: plate
label: Object Type
content: plate
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: blue (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome (overall surface decoration color name)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic, porcelain, hard-paste (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 9 1/4 in; 23.495 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 1 1/4 in x 9 3/8 in; 3.175 cm x 23.8125 cm