Meissen tea bowl and saucer
date: label: date made
content: ca 1735-1740
label: date made
content: 1735-1740
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: Bowl: H. 1¾" 4.5cm; Saucer: D. 5¼" 13.3cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Tea bowl and saucer
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: ca. 1735-1740
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: 1987.0896.08ab
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 423ab
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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; “4” in gold on cup; and“7” in gold on saucer (gold painter’s numbers); former’s mark impressed on bottom of cup.
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: Framed by leaf and strapwork (Laub-und Bandelwerk) in iron-red and purple enamel, purple luster, and gold, and painted in onglaze polychrome enamels the tea bowl has a river scene dominated by a windmill on one side and the entrance to a harbor on the other. On the saucer a harbor scene shows figures waiting or watching for small sailing ships seen in the distance. Vignettes of harbor scenes are painted in purple enamel contained within the gold scrollwork borders on the interior rims of both the tea bowl and saucer.
label: Description
content: Sources for enamel painted harbor and waterside scenes came from the vast number of prints after paintings by Dutch masters of the seventeenth century that formed a major part of Meissen’s output from the early 1720s until the 1750s. 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 popular were the subjects by painters Jan van Goyen (1596-1656), Jan van de Velde (1593-1641), and Johann Wilhelm Baur (d.1640).
label: Description
content: The popularity of landscape, harbor, and waterside subjects held particular appeal for city dwellers and for the nobility obliged to fulfill court duties. Long before Meissen began production Dutch artists realized the potential for a market in prints that led viewers into pleasant places real and imagined. In seventeenth-century Amsterdam there was a flourishing publishing industry to support the production of illustrated books and print series for buyers to view at their leisure. Printed images enriched people’s lives and a series of prints might take the viewer on a journey, real or imaginary. Prints performed a role in European visual culture later extended by photography and film, and they provided artisans and artists with images, motifs, and patterns applied in the decoration of many branches of artisan made and manufactured goods.
label: Description
content: The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Enamel painters specializing in landscapes, harbor, and river scenes with staffage (figures and animals) 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 or salary. Decorative scrollwork was the responsibility of another painter specializing in this form of decoration.
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.
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content: On Dutch prints see Goddard, S. H., 1984, Sets and Series: Prints from the Low Countries.
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. 298-299.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: Germany: Saxony, Meissen
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: 1987.0896.08ab
label: catalog number
content: 1987.0896.08ab
label: accession number
content: 1987.0896
label: collector/donor number
content: 423ab
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: gold (saucer color)
label: Physical Description
content: gold (tea bowl color)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome (component surface decoration color name)
label: Physical Description
content: harbor scenes (joint piece description of decoration)
label: Physical Description
content: harbor scenes (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: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome enamles and gold (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: harbor and landscape scenes (overall style)
label: Measurements
content: bowl: 1 3/4 in; 4.445 cm
label: Measurements
content: saucer: 5 1/4 in; 13.335 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall tea bowl: 1 7/8 in x 3 1/8 in; 4.7625 cm x 7.9375 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall saucer: 1 in x 5 1/4 in; 2.54 cm x 13.335 cm