Object Details
- Meissen Manufactory
- Description
- TITLE: Meissen teapot and cover
- MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
- PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
- MEASUREMENTS: H. 3½" 8.9cm
- OBJECT NAME: Teapot
- PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
- DATE MADE: 1745
- SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
- Art
- Domestic Furnishing
- Industry and Manufacturing
- CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
- ID NUMBER: 1989.0715.12 a,b
- COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 318 a,b
- ACCESSION NUMBER:
- (DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
- MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “3” impressed.
- PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1943.
- This teapot 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.
- The little teapot, from a service probably designed for the use of one person, has a yellow onglaze ground with German flowers (deutsche Blumen) painted in onglaze enamels within the white reserves. The influence of Far Eastern prototypes remains in the dragon spout that can also be seen on oil and vinegar pots made for cruet sets.
- European flowers began to appear on Meissen porcelain in about 1740 as the demand for Far Eastern patterns became less dominant and more high quality printed sources became available in conjunction with growing interest in the scientific study of flora and fauna. For German flowers as seen on this teapot Meissen painters referred, among other publications, to Johann Wilhelm Weinmann’s Phytantoza Iconographia (Nuremberg 1737-1745), in which many of the plates of fruits and flowers were engraved after drawings by the outstanding botanical illustrator Georg Dionys Ehret (1708-1770). The more formally correct German flowers were superseded by mannered flowers (manier Blumen), depicted in a looser and somewhat overblown style based on the work of still-life flower painters and interior designers like Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer (1636-1699) and Louis Tessier (1719?-1781), later referred to as “naturalistic” flowers.
- The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Flower and fruit painters were paid less than workers who specialized in figures and landscapes, and most painters received pay by the piece rather than a regular wage. In the late eighteenth century flower painters were even busier and consumer taste for floral decoration on domestic “china” continues into our own time, but with the exception of a manufactory like Meissen most floral patterns are now applied by transfers and are not hand-painted directly onto the porcelain.
- 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; Cassidy-Geiger, M., 1996, ‘Graphic Sources for Meissen Porcelain’ in Metropolitan Museum Journal, 31, pp.99-126.
- On the painting division at Meissen see Rückert, R., 1990, Biographische Daten der Meißener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts, pp. 134-136
- Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 370-371.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ca 1745
- 1745
- ID Number
- 1989.0715.12ab
- catalog number
- 1989.0715.12ab
- accession number
- 1989.0715
- collector/donor number
- 318
- Object Name
- teapot
- Physical Description
- hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
- polychrome enamel and yellow ground (overall color)
- German flowers (overall style)
- blue (overall color)
- Measurements
- overall: 3 1/2 in; 8.89 cm
- overall: 3 5/8 in x 6 in x 3 1/2 in; 9.2075 cm x 15.24 cm x 8.89 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
- National Museum of American History
- Subject
- Manufacturing
- Record ID
- nmah_1415452
- GUID (Link to Original Record)
- https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746ad-88a3-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa
