Meissen coffee pot and cover

Object Details

Meissen Manufactory

Description

TITLE: Meissen coffeepot and cover

MAKER: Meissen Manufactory

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)

MEASUREMENTS: H. 7½" 19.1cm

OBJECT NAME: Coffeepot

PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany

DATE MADE: ca. 1730-1735

SUBJECT: Art

Domestic Furnishing

Industry and Manufacturing

CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection

ID NUMBER: 1983.0565.03ab

COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 892ab

ACCESSION NUMBER:

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

MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; incised cross.

PURCHASED FROM: Adolf Beckhardt, The Art Exchange, New York, 1952.

This coffeepot is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began collecting 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 coffeepot and cover have white reserves in a dark blue underglaze ground featuring waterside scenes with on the one side of the pot a small vessel moored on a riverbank, and on the other a riverbank and landscape with two figures and two trees in the foreground. On the cover are two harbor scenes.

Sources for harbor scenes and waterside landscapes came from the large number of prints after paintings by Dutch masters of the seventeenth century that formed a major part of Meissen’s output from the early 1720s until the 1750s. The Meissen manufactory accumulated folios of prints, about six to twelve in a set, as well as illustrated books and individual prints after the work of many European artists, but especially the work of Jan van Goyen (1596-1656), Jan van de Velde (1593-1641), and Johann Wilhelm Baur (d.1640). Printed images enriched people’s lives and a series of prints might take the viewer on a journey, real or imaginary. Prints performed a role in European visual culture later extended by photography and film, and they provided artisans and artists with images, motifs, and patterns applied in many branches of the applied arts.

In the eighteenth century tea, coffee, and chocolate was served in the private apartments of aristocratic women, usually in the company of other women, but also with male admirers and intimates present. In affluent middle-class households tea and coffee drinking was often the occasion for an informal family gathering. Coffee houses were almost exclusively male establishments and operated as gathering places for a variety of purposes in the interests of commerce, politics, culture, and social pleasure.

The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Enamel painters specializing in landscapes, harbor, and river scenes with staffage (figures and animals) were paid more than those who painted flowers, fruits and underglaze blue patterns. Most painters received pay by the piece rather than a regular wage or salary. On-glaze gold decoration was the work of other specialists in this type of ornamentation.

On graphic sources for Meissen’s painters see Möller, K. A., “’…fine copper pieces for the factory…’ 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. 84-93.

On the history of coffee drinking see Weinberg, B.A., Bealer, B.K., 2002, The World of Caffeine:The Science and Culture of the World’s Most Popular Drug

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. 114-115.

Location

Currently not on view

ca 1730-1735

1730-1735

ID Number

1983.0565.03ab

accession number

1983.0565

catalog number

1983.0565.03ab

collector/donor number

892ab

Object Name

coffeepot

Physical Description

blue (overall color)

hard-paste porcelain (overall material)

polychrome and gold (overall color)

harbor scenes (overall style)

Measurements

overall: 7 1/2 in; 19.05 cm

overall: 7 5/8 in x 5 5/8 in x 4 1/4 in; 19.3675 cm x 14.2875 cm x 10.795 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

Record ID

nmah_1439339

Metadata Usage (text)

CC0

GUID (Link to Original Record)

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746b2-bedd-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa