Meissen tea caddy

Object Details

Description

TITLE: Meissen tea caddy

MAKER: Meissen Manufactory

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: ceramic, porcelain (overall material)

MEASUREMENTS: H. 4⅞" 12.4cm

OBJECT NAME: Tea caddy

PLACE MADE: Meissen, Saxony, Germany

DATE MADE: 1750-1760

SUBJECT: The Hans Syz Collection

Art

Domestic Furnishing

Industry and Manufacturing

CREDIT LINE: Hans C. Syz Collection

ID NUMBER: 61.69ab

COLLECTOR/ DONOR: 465

ACCESSION NUMBER:

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

MARKS: None

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

This tea caddy 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 psychoanalysis 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 tea caddy is similar to the tea and coffee set (ID# 61.69 A-H), but the pattern for the rococo cartouches of vines, scrolls, and trellises is different. The subjects include harbor scenes with accessory figures at work on or near the water, and pastoral scenes featuring the elegant so-called “Watteau” figures.

Sources for enamel painted harbor scenes and landscapes came from the vast number of prints after paintings by Italian, Dutch, and Flemish masters of the seventeenth century that formed a major part of Meissen’s output from the early 1730s until the 1760s. 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, especially the work of Jan van Goyen (1596-1656) and Jan van de Velde (1593-1641). Here the idealized landscapes and harbor scenes form the setting through which the nobility and landed gentry walk, ride, and take their ease, surveying their possessions removed from the formality of the court. In the early 1740s the manufactory began to acquire a collection of copperplate engravings on which the Meissen painters based their “Watteauszenen” (Watteau scenes), and they became so much in demand that eleven painters were appointed to specialize in work on this theme. The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Enamel painters specializing in landscapes and subjects with figures 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. Gold decoration was the work of other specialists in the painting division.

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.

Hans Syz, J. Jefferson Miller II, Rainer Rückert, 1979, Catalogue of the Hans Syz Collection: Meissen Porcelain and Hausmalerei, pp. 336-337.

Location

Currently not on view

Data Source

National Museum of American History

maker

Meissen Manufactory

date made

ca 1750-1760

1750-1760

Credit Line

Dr. Hans Syz

Physical Description

polychrome (overall surface decoration color name)

ceramic, porcelain, hard-paste (cover material)

ceramic, porcelain, hard-paste (overall material)

metal (overall material)

Measurements

overall: 4 7/8 in; 12.3825 cm

overall: 4 7/8 in x 2 15/16 in x 1 15/16 in; 12.3825 cm x 7.46125 cm x 4.92125 cm

Object Name

caddy, tea