Skip to main content Smithsonian Institution

Catalog Data

Maker:
Meissen Manufactory  Search this
Physical Description:
hard-paste porcelain (overall material)
polychrome enamels and gold (overall color)
songbirds and insects (overall style)
Measurements:
overall: 9 3/4 in; 24.765 cm
overall: 1 3/4 in x 9 5/8 in; 4.445 cm x 24.4475 cm
Object Name:
plate, soup
Place made:
Germany: Saxony, Meissen
Date made:
ca 1750
1750
Description:
TITLE: Meissen: Pair of soup plates
MAKER: Meissen Manufactory
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)
MEASUREMENTS: D. 9¾" 24.8cm
OBJECT NAME: Soup plates
PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany
DATE MADE: 1750
SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection
Art
Domestic Furnishing
Industry and Manufacturing
CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection
ID NUMBER: 1993.447.05 A,B
COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 754 A,B
ACCESSION NUMBER:
(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)
MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “H” in overglaze iron-red (painter’s mark); “22” impressed.
PURCHASED FROM: S. Berges, New York, 1948.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 412-413.
Location:
Currently not on view
Subject:
Manufacturing  Search this
ID Number:
1993.0447.05A
Accession number:
1993.0447
Catalog number:
1993.0447.05A
Collector/donor number:
754A
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
GUID:
http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746ab-bbda-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa
EDAN-URL:
edanmdm:nmah_1420030