Meissen soup plate: one of a pair
date: label: date made
content: ca 1750
label: date made
content: 1750
name: label: maker
content: Meissen Manufactory
notes: label: Description
content: TITLE: Meissen: Pair of soup plates
label: Description
content: MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
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content: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
label: Description
content: MEASUREMENTS: D. 9¾" 24.8cm
label: Description
content: OBJECT NAME: Soup plates
label: Description
content: PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
label: Description
content: DATE MADE: 1750
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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: 1993.447.05 A,B
label: Description
content: COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 754 A,B
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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: MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “H” in overglaze iron-red (painter’s mark); “22” impressed.
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content: PURCHASED FROM: S. Berges, New York, 1948.
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content: These plates 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 two soup plates come from a dinner service designed with a raised pattern. In the reserves the paintings in overglaze enamel of birds perched on branches 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: 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 rim lines were painted by a specialist in gold decoration.
label: Description
content: Production of a dinner service was a large undertaking as the conventions of eighteenth-century dining followed the French style in which guests were offered a wide choice of dishes served at the table in three or more courses. Depending on social status the table might have included silver or gold plate on which to present the dishes, supplemented by a porcelain service for individual place settings. The visual climax of the dinner was the dessert, the course in which specially designed vessels in porcelain and glass supported artfully placed fruits, sweetmeats, jellies and creams, and for which the confectioners created elaborate table decorations in sugar that were later replaced by porcelain figures and centerpieces. These soup plates belong to a service intended for less grand occasions produced for the table in aristocratic households or for wealthy middle-class buyers.
label: Description
content: On the Meissen dinner services and table decorations see Ulrich Pietsch “Famous Eighteenth-Century Meissen Dinner Services” and Maureen Cassidy-Geiger “”The Hof-Conditorey in Dresden” in Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 94-105; 120-131.
label: Description
content: Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 412-413.
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
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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: 1993.0447.05A
label: accession number
content: 1993.0447
label: catalog number
content: 1993.0447.05A
label: collector/donor number
content: 754A
objectType: label: Object Name
content: plate, soup
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: polychrome enamels and gold (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: songbirds and insects (overall style)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 9 3/4 in; 24.765 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 1 3/4 in x 9 5/8 in; 4.445 cm x 24.4475 cm