Meissen red stoneware tankard and cover
date: label: date made
content: 1710-1720
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: MARKS: None
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: Leopold Blumka, New York, 1947.
label: Description
content: This tankard 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 collector and 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 Germany, 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 tankard was made in red stoneware, a very hard and dense type of ceramic similar in appearance to the Chinese Yixing ceramics which inspired their imitation at Meissen. Red stoneware, enriched with iron oxides, preceded porcelain in the Dresden laboratory where physicist, mathematician, and philosopher, Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus (1651-1708) and alchemist Johann Friedrich Böttger (1682-1719) experimented with raw materials fused by solar energy amplified through a burning glass. Success in red stoneware was an important step towards development of white porcelain.
label: Description
content: The tankard has a silver mounting on both the rim of the vessel and the cover with the hinge attached to the strap handle. Its simple form is enhanced by turned molding on the cover, the top, and base of the vessel. The red-brown stoneware is finished by polishing, a technique Böttger borrowed from glass making and lapidary work.
label: Description
content: Tankards originated in beer-drinking countries, and in early modern Europe the middle-class beer drinker had stoneware and tin-glazed tankards with tin or pewter mountings that were rich in various regional styles. Pewter and glass tankards were also common. Goldsmiths produced luxury vessels for the merchant and ruling class, and the Meissen red stoneware tankards were transitional objects emulating vessels made from silver and from cut and polished semi-precious stones mounted with gold and silver gilt.
label: Description
content: On Yixing stonewares see Lo, K.S., 1986, The Stoneware of Yixing from the Ming Period to the Present Day.
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp.24-25.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
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: Art
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content: Domestic Furnishings
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Hans C. Syz Collection
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1983.0565.51
label: accession number
content: 1983.0565
label: collector/donor number
content: 612
label: catalog number
content: 1983.0565.51
objectType: label: Object Name
content: tankard
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: red stoneware (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: polished red stoneware (overall color)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 7 1/2 in; 19.05 cm