Meissen chinoiserie miniature teapot and cover

Object Details

Meissen Manufactory

Description

TITLE: Meissen chinoiserie miniature teapot and cover

MAKER: Meissen Manufactory

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)

MEASUREMENTS: H. 3⅜" 8.5cm

OBJECT NAME: Teapot

PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany

DATE MADE: 1740

SUBJECT: Art

Domestic Furnishing

Industry and Manufacturing

CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection

ID NUMBER: 67.1041 a,b

COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 703

ACCESSION NUMBER:

(DATA SOURCE: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center)TITLE: Meissen chinoiserie miniature teapot and cover

MAKER: Meissen Manufactory

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)

MEASUREMENTS: H. 3⅜" 8.5cm

OBJECT NAME: Teapot

PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany

DATE MADE: 1740

SUBJECT: Art

Domestic Furnishing

Industry and Manufacturing

CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection

ID NUMBER: 67.1041 a,b

COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 703

ACCESSION NUMBER:

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

MARKS: Crossed swords in underglaze blue; “14” in gold (gold painter’s mark); “36” impressed (former’s mark).

PURCHASED FROM: Hans E. Backer, London, England, 1947. Ex. Coll. Constantinidi.

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 ovoid teapot belongs to the last years in the distinctive chinoiserie period in Meissen’s history that began in 1720 with the arrival from Vienna of Johann Gregor Höroldt (1696-1775). Höroldt brought with him superior skills in enamel painting on porcelain, and 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. 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.

The chinoiserie subjects are here framed by simple gold reserves in a yellow onglaze ground. On one side a man holds a parasol over a woman with a child in her arms while another child calls for attention nearby, and on the other side a cauldron smokes behind a man and a child as a figure leaves the scene weighted down by a basket loaded with vessels containing hot food or liquor. On the cover are two scenes depicting the preparation and drinking of tea. The scenes are painted in the style of Johann Gregor Höroldt.

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.

Meissen tea and coffee services of this early period were often sent as gifts to members of European royalty favored by the Saxon and Polish courts. They served as tokens of loyalty and affection to relatives in other royal houses with family connections to the Saxon House of Wettin. A small teapot like this one might have belonged to a service packed in a special box designed for travel.

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 colored grounds see Pietsch, U., Banz, C., 2010, Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgoisie 1710-1815, pp. 267-274.

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

On gift-giving see Cassidy-Geiger, M., 2008, Fragile Diplomacy: Meissen Porcelain for European Courts 1710-1763.

Jefferson Miller II, J., Rückert, R., Syz, H., 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection, pp. 84-85.

Location

Currently not on view

Credit Line

Dr. Hans Syz

ca 1740

1740

ID Number

CE.67.1041ab

catalog number

67.1041ab

collector/donor number

703

accession number

276588

Object Name

teapot, miniature

Physical Description

"gold" (overall color)

blue (overall color)

gold (cover color)

polychrome (overall surface decoration color name)

ceramic, porcelain, hard-paste (overall material)

chinoiserie (joint piece style)

Measurements

overall: 3 3/8 in; 8.5725 cm

overall: 3 5/16 in x 5 in x 3 1/8 in; 8.4455 cm x 12.7 cm x 7.9375 cm

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_572983

Metadata Usage (text)

CC0

GUID (Link to Original Record)

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746a3-e281-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa