Tea caddy

Many of the earliest porcelain works made at Meissen employed forms and motifs that had been used in its red-stoneware production. In several instances, the same molds were used for the porcelain examples as had been used for the stoneware (42.205.17, .23a, b). In other cases, the use of stoneware models for porcelain may have been driven by the relatively limited repertoire of forms and decorative vocabulary employed by the factory in the early years of porcelain production. This beaker vase was thrown on the wheel rather than made from a mold, and its form and applied ornament follow closely a stoneware model, of which several examples exist.[5] On both the stoneware and porcelain examples, the ornament consists of applied decorative bands composed of bellflowers below the rim and stylized acanthus above the foot, with a female mask applied just above the waist. The mask on the Museum’s vase differs from that on the stoneware examples, but the ornament on all the vases is drawn from the vocabulary of European metalwork.[6]

The factory had hired the Dresden goldsmith Johann Jacob Irminger (German, 1635–1724) in 1710, who was cited as providing “the inventions and new designs” for the factory’s production.[7] Irminger determined the decorative schemes of stoneware and then porcelain, and the factory’s style during these years derives largely from him. The vases and wares produced from Irminger’s designs depend upon a varied vocabulary of applied ornament for their visual impact. This ornament was sometimes restrained, as on this beaker vase, but it was often profuse, covering much of the surface of an object.[8] The sculptural nature of the factory’s decoration during these years was due in part to the prevailing Baroque taste that favored bold ornament and decoration in relief. But it also must have been driven by the factory’s inability at this time to fire painted decoration, a technical feat that would not be mastered until the early 1720s.

Many of the individual motifs, such as masks or bands of ornament, are used repeatedly and in varying combinations on the porcelain production from 1715 to 1719 (see 1974.356.499).[9] Much of the applied ornament that appears on the porcelain is more ambitious and more elaborate than what is found on the stoneware, but it often lacks the crispness of its stoneware counterpart due to the presence of glaze. The period in which the porcelain production relied upon applied ornament as the primary decoration was short-lived, but it produced some of the factory’s most remarkable works that reflect its quick mastery of the new medium of porcelain.


Footnotes
(For key to shortened references see bibliography in Munger, European Porcelain in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018)
1 See Bursche 1980, pp. 37–73; Walcha 1981, pp. 15–41; Johann Friedrich Böttger 1982; I. Menzhausen 1990, pp. 10–15; Blaauwen 2000, pp. 17–35; Pietsch 2010b; Eberle 2011a, pp. 15–25; Eberle 2011b, pp. 11–17.
2 Eberle 2011a, p. 24.
3 Bothe 2009, p. 25.
4 Chilton 1988, p. 14.
5 See Blaauwen 2000, pp. 18–19, no. 1; Agliano and Jezler- Hübner 2003, pp. 14–15, no. 1; Gielke 2003, p. 15, no. 15. All three examples are dated to ca. 1715, but a date of ca. 1710–13 is more likely for these stoneware examples, and it is probable that the porcelain version was made only a year or two later.
6 For a typical use of both low-relief acanthus decoration and applied masks, see a garniture of seven vases by Albrecht Biller, ca. 1700; Lorenz Seelig in Baumstark and Seling 1994, vol. 2, pp. 348–53, no. 82.
7 Pietsch 2010b, p. 16.
8 For example, see Johann Friedrich Böttger 1982, no. 1/81.
9 For example, the same mask appears on a sake bottle and a covered vase, both in the Porzellansammlung, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (ibid., nos. 1/68 and 1/86, respectively), and the stylized acanthus band appears on a vase in the same collection (Meissen 1984, ill. no. 184).