Meissen figure of a hurdy-gurdy player
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 figure of a man playing the hurdy-gurdy
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
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content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain, hard paste (overall material)
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content: MEASUREMENTS: 5⅜" 13.7 cm.
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Figure
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1735-1740
label: Description
content: SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
label: Description
content: 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: 66.172
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 614
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content: ACCESSION NUMBER:
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content: (DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
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content: MARK: ‘33’ impressed
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content: PURCHASED FROM: E. Pinkus, New York, 1947.
label: Description
content: This figure 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 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: Modeled by Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775) in the late 1730s or early 1740s the figure was copied by the Chelsea Manufactory in London in 1755. The figure represents a beggar playing the hurdy-gurdy. A semi-mechanical device, the hurdy-gurdy is a stringed instrument akin to the violin that dispenses with the bow, instead using a wooden wheel that rotates on a shaft turned by a hand crank. The sound produced by the wheel against the drone strings that play individual notes in harmony is akin to the reed pipes on a bagpipe. Using a keyboard with one hand while turning the wheel crank in the other, the musician plays the melody over the drone sound. The hurdy-gurdy was the first stringed instrument to exploit the keyboard, and it was played in Europe at least as far back as the twelfth century. It was one of the folk instruments played at country fairs and in the streets of towns and cities, far from the refined musical activities of the court until it later became fashionable for aristocratic men and women to play the instrument.
label: Description
content: Meissen figures and figure groups are usually sculpted in special modeling clay and then carefully cut into separate pieces from which individual molds are made. Porcelain clay is then pressed into the molds and the whole figure or group reassembled to its original form, a process requiring great care and skill. The piece is then dried thoroughly before firing in the kiln. In the production of complex figure groups the work is arduous and requires the making of many molds from the original model.
label: Description
content: The figure is painted in overglaze enamel colors. There is a companion figure of a beggar woman, and these figures were probably used in table decorations for the dessert course at court banquets.
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content: On the hurdy-gurdy see the New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments Vol. 2, 1984, pp.260-264; Ling, J., 1997, A History of European Folk Music, pp.148-151.
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content: On the modeling and molding process still practiced today at Meissen see Alfred Ziffer, “‘…skillfully made ready for moulding…’ The Work of Johann Joachim Kaendler” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgeoisie 1710-1815, pp.61-67, and pp. 351-352.
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 422-423.
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
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Dr. Hans Syz
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CE.66.172
label: catalog number
content: 66.172
label: collector/donor number
content: 614
label: accession number
content: 270694
objectType: label: Object Name
content: figurine
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: polychrome (overall surface decoration color name)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic, porcelain, hard-paste (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 5 3/8 in; 13.6525 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 5 7/16 in x 3 7/16 in x 5 1/8 in; 13.81125 cm x 8.73125 cm x 13.0175 cm