Meissen tureen, cover, and stand
date: label: date made
content: ca 1760
label: date made
content: 1760
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen tureen, cover and stand
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
label: Description
content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: Tureen: H. 10" 25.4cm L. 14¾" 37.5cm; Stand: L. 15¼" 38.7cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Tureen and stand
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1760
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: 1992.0427.20 Aab
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 349
label: Description
content: ACCESSION NUMBER:
label: Description
content: (DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
label: Description
content: MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “54” impressed on stand.
label: Description
content: PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1943.
label: Description
content: This tureen, cover and stand are 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: The tureen and oval stand carry the scrolled and foliate relief design known as the Dulong pattern and named after the Amsterdam firm Dulong, Godefroy, and Dulong who dealt in Meissen porcelain and placed a commission for a dinner service in 1743. The Dulong pattern marks a break with the earlier symmetry of the basket weave designs with its mobile entwined foliage that covers the whole surface of the tureen and spills over the rim of the stand into the well (cavetto). Within the rococo cartouches songbirds perch on branches painted in onglaze enamels, and scattered flowers are on the cover, the underside of the tureen, and the stand. The cover has a cauliflower finial, molded nuts and vegetables; mushrooms, asparagus, and almonds.
label: Description
content: Like the Gotzkowsky service commissioned by the Berlin entrepreneur Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky, the Dulong service was not made for royal or aristocratic patrons but for a growing number of wealthy individuals in business and commerce. The Meissen Manufactory actively pursued market openings for affluent middle-class consumers, many of whom were attracted to the less expensive blue and white wares.
label: Description
content: The birds were likely based on hand-colored plates from Eleazar Albin’s (1713-1759) two volume work A Natural History of Birds, first published in London in 1731, and a second edition in 1738. The Meissen manufactory had a copy of the work that Albin completed with his daughter Elizabeth.
label: Description
content: Other possible sources include the Sammlung Verschiedener Auslandischer und Seltener Vogel (‘Collection of various foreign and uncommon birds’ Nuremberg 1749-1776) in which the engraver Johann Michael Seligmann based his hand-colored plates on two other works, the Natural History of Uncommon Birds (London 1743-1751) by George Edwards, and Mark Catesby’s Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (London 1731-1743), especially as one of the birds depicted is a North American goldfinch. Other birds include a chaffinch and a bullfinch.
label: Description
content: The specialist bird painters (Vogelmaler) at Meissen were low in number compared to the flower painters, but the term “color painter” (Buntmaler) was a fluid term indicating that painters moved from one category to another as demand required, especially for flower, fruit and bird subjects. The gold decoration was painted by another specialist in the painting division.
label: Description
content: On graphic sources for Meissen porcelain see Möller, K. A., “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.85-93.
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 410-411.
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
label: See more items in
content: The Hans C. Syz Collection
label: See more items in
content: Meissen Porcelain: The Hans Syz Collection
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1992.0427.20B
label: accession number
content: 1992.0427
label: catalog number
content: 1992.0427.20B
label: collector/donor number
content: 350
objectType: label: Object Name
content: stand
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: 15 1/4 in; 38.735 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 2 7/8 in x 15 1/8 in x 10 1/2 in; 7.3025 cm x 38.4175 cm x 26.67 cm