Object Details
maker
Meissen Manufactory
Description
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; two small incised crosses (former’s mark).
PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1943.
This tea bowl and saucer 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.
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.
Meissen’s chinoiserie period began in the 1720s following the arrival from Vienna of Johann Gregor Höroldt (1696-1775) who brought with him superior skills in enamel painting on porcelain. His highly significant contribution to Meissen was to develop a palette of very fine bright enamel colors that had so far eluded the team of metallurgists at the manufactory, and that were new to onglaze enamel colors on faience and porcelain in general.
The tea bowl and saucer are painted with chinoiseries in the style associated with Johann Ehrenfried Stadler (1701-1741) who worked for Peter Eggebrecht’s Dresden faience manufactory before employment at Meissen. His work is associated with figures that stand, run or trot along fenced terraces carrying fans, kites or parasols beside exuberant flowers and foliage. On the saucer a man walks in a garden carrying a parasol, and on the tea bowl a man runs carrying a fan with an exotic bird flying overhead. Diaper and foliate patterned borders circle the interiors of the pieces.
Chinoiserie is from the French Chinois (Chinese) and refers to ornamentation that is Chinese-like. The style evolved in Europe as Chinese luxury products began to arrive in the West in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries through the major European trading companies. Artisans were quick to incorporate motifs from these products into their work and to imitate their material qualities, especially the Chinese lacquers, embroidered silks, and porcelains, but their imitation was not informed by first-hand knowledge of China or an understanding of Chinese conventions in two-dimensional representation, and instead a fanciful European vision emerged to become an ornamental style employed in garden and interior design, in cabinet making, faience and porcelain manufacture, and in textiles. Illustrated books began to appear in the second half of the seventeenth century that describe the topography of China, its peoples and their customs, and these sources were copied and used by designers, artists, printmakers, and artisans including Johann Gregor Höroldt at Meissen. Application of the term chinoiserie to this class of Meissen porcelains is problematic, however, because Johann Gregor Höroldt developed his ideas from a variety of sources and referred to the “chinoiseries” as “Japanese” (Japonische) figures, an early modern generic term for exotic artifacts and images imported from the East.
On Johann Gregor Höroldt see Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 17-25.
On chinoiserie see Impey, O., 1997, Chinoiserie: the Impact of Oriental Styles on Western Art and Decoration; on the porcelain trade and European exposure to the Chinese product see the exhibition catalog by Emerson, J., Chen, J., Gardner Gates, M., 2000, Porcelain Stories: from China to Europe
Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection, pp. 90-91.
TITLE: Meissen chinoiserie tea bowl and saucer
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: Tea bowl: H. 1¾"4.5cm, Saucer: D. 4⅝" 11.8cm
OBJECT NAME: tea bowl and saucer
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1725-35
SUBJECT: Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 76.365 a,b
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 283
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
Location
Currently not on view
Credit Line
Dr. Hans Syz
date made
1725-1735
ID Number
CE.76.365ab
catalog number
76.365ab
accession number
1977.0166
collector/donor number
283ab
Object Name
bowl, tea
saucer
Physical Description
blue (saucer color)
blue (tea bowl color)
polychrome (component surface decoration color name)
garden scenes with figures (joint piece description of decoration)
garden scenes with figures (overall description of decoration)
ceramic, porcelain, hard-paste (saucer material)
ceramic, porcelain, hard-paste (tea bowl material)
Measurements
overall: bowl: 1 3/4 in; 4.445 cm
overall: saucer: 4 5/8 in; 11.7475 cm
overall tea bowl: 1 7/8 in x 3 in; 4.7625 cm x 7.62 cm
overall saucer: 1 in x 4 5/8 in; 2.54 cm x 11.7475 cm
place made
Germany: Saxony, Meissen
See more items in
Home and Community Life: Ceramics and Glass
The Hans C. Syz Collection
Meissen Porcelain: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishings
Data Source
National Museum of American History
Subject
Manufacturing
Link to Original Record
Record ID
nmah_573251