Meissen knife handle
date: label: date made
content: ca 1725-1730
label: date made
content: 1725-1730
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen knife and fork handles
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
label: Description
content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: L. 2½" 6.3cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Knife and fork
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1725-1730
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: 1984.1140.13 AB
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 509 AB
label: Description
content: ACCESSION NUMBER:
label: Description
content: (DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
label: Description
content: MARKS: None on porcelain; on knife blade “CGI” and “14” stamped in oval.
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: S. Berges, New York, 1944.
label: Description
content: This knife and fork is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of European 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: Painted with Indian flowers (indianische Blumen) and a lambrequin pattern the handles on the knife and fork follow the Japanese Imari style. The silver knife blade and fork tines are contemporary with the porcelain handles.
label: Description
content: Japanese Imari wares came from kilns near the town of Arita in the north-western region of Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost island, and were exported to Europe by the Dutch through the port of Imari. Decorated in the Aka-e-machi, the enameling center in Arita, Imari wares are generally distinguished from those made in the Kakiemon style by the darker palette of enamel colors and densely patterned surfaces, some of which are clearly derived from Japanese and South-East Asian textiles and known in Japan as brocade ware (nishiki-de), but there are considerable variations within this broad outline. Unlike the Kakiemon style a high proportion of Japanese Imari wares combined underglaze blue painting with overglaze enamel colors.
label: Description
content: While the knife has an ancient history as a tool for butchering and cutting food, the table fork is a much later invention. Large two-pronged forks existed in antiquity to assist in the handling of large cuts of meat, but the custom of using a small fork for dining appeared in the cultures of the Middle East and Byzantium in the fifth to seventh century CE. When introduced to Venice in the tenth century by a Byzantine bride at her wedding feast to the Doge’s son, the Venetian court considered the implement a decadent affectation. Nevertheless, forks were adopted slowly in Italy, at first in elite society, and then spread to other parts of Europe reaching England with the traveler Thomas Coryote in the early seventeenth century. Forks arrived with European settlers at a later date in the American colonies, but their use was not wholeheartedly accepted even in the 1800s.
label: Description
content: For a detailed account of the Imari style and its European imitators see Ayers, J., Impey, O., Mallet, J.V.G., 1990, Porcelain for Palaces: the fashion for Japan in Europe 1650-1750.
label: Description
content: Rotondo-McCord, L., 1997, Imari: Japanese Porcelain for European Palaces: The Freda and Ralph Lupin Collection.
label: Description
content: For two examples of full sets of flatware with Meissen handles in the Imari style and with Augsburg metalwork see Weber, J., 2013, Meissener Porzellane mit Dekoren nach ostasiatischen Vorbildern: Stiftung Ernst Schneider in Schloss Lustheim, Band II, S. 50-51.
label: Description
content: For histories of the fork see http://leitesculinaria.com/1157/writings-the-uncommon-origins-of-the-common-fork.html
label: Description
content: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/food/2009/07/a-history-of-western-eating-utensils-from-the-scandalous-fork-to-the-incredible-spork/
label: Description
content: Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection, pp. 206-207.
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
label: See more items in
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: 1984.1140.13A
label: catalog number
content: 1984.1140.13A
label: accession number
content: 1984.1140
label: collector/donor number
content: 509A
objectType: label: Object Name
content: knife
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome enamels and gold (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: Imari (overall style)
label: Physical Description
content: silver (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: handle: 2 1/2 in; 6.35 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 5/8 in x 8 1/8 in x 3/4 in; 1.5875 cm x 20.6375 cm x 1.905 cm