Meissen chocolate pot and cover

Object Details

Meissen Manufactory

Description

TITLE: Meissen chocolate pot and cover

MAKER: Meissen Manufactory

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)

MEASUREMENTS: H. 7⅛" 18.1cm

OBJECT NAME: Chocolate pot

PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany

DATE MADE: 1775-1800

SUBJECT: Art

Domestic Furnishing

Industry and Manufacturing

CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection

ID NUMBER: 1987.0896.06 ab

COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 450

ACCESSION NUMBER:

(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)

MARKS: Crossed swords and star in underglaze blue; “83” impressed.

PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1944.

This chocolate pot and cover 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 chocolate pot, based on contemporary metal pots of the period, has a wooden handle mounted in a side socket and a wooden finial on the cover; wooden handles protected hands from the hot surface of the pot when filled with liquid. The finial could be removed and a swizzle stick inserted to raise froth on the hot chocolate and mix it thoroughly. The spout has a scrolled molding.

Hot chocolate, one of the three hot liquors to transform European drinking and social rituals, was more expensive and laborious to prepare than coffee, but nevertheless very popular in affluent society. Usually, chocolate was taken as a breakfast drink for those who could afford such a luxury and the trembleuse cup and saucer was designed for those who took their breakfast in bed, and for invalids for whom chocolate was considered of medicinal value. Although not as numerous as coffee houses, chocolate houses began to appear in European cities in the late seventeenth century. The beverage was very different to the powdered cocoa drinks of today, and was closer to its origin in the cultures of Central and South America, but made more palatable for Europeans with the addition of sugar and cream.

In the late eighteenth century Meissen produced various items reminiscent of the early Meissen Böttger porcelains that were admired for their raised ornament designed originally by the Dresden court goldsmith Johann Jacob Irminger (1635-1724), the so-called Irmingersche Belege. The applied grapevine (Wein-Laub) design seen on this pot and cover was especially favored.

On the practice of drinking hot chocolate see Bowman, P.B., 1995, In Praise of Hot Liquors: The Study of Chocolate, Coffee and Tea-drinking 1600-1850; on the history of coffee houses see Ellis, M. 2011, The Coffee House: A Cultural History; for an exhaustive study of chocolate see Grivetti, L. E., Shapiro, H. Y., 2009, Chocolate: History, Culture, and Heritage.

Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 274-275.

Location

Currently not on view

ca 1775-1800

1775-1800

ID Number

1987.0896.06ab

catalog number

1987.0896.06ab

accession number

1987.0896

collector/donor number

450

Object Name

chocolate pot and cover

pot, chocolate

Physical Description

hard-paste porcelain (overall material)

white (overall color)

vine pattern applied in relief (overall style)

Measurements

overall: 7 1/8 in; 18.0975 cm

overall: 7 1/8 in x 10 3/8 in x 6 1/8 in; 18.0975 cm x 26.3525 cm x 15.5575 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_1415639

Metadata Usage (text)

CC0

GUID (Link to Original Record)

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746ad-9f64-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa