Proving that all that glitters is not gold, Meissen porcelain, long known as “white gold,” is turning heads anew in a new exhibition, “Evolution of a Royal Vision: The Birth of Meissen Porcelain,” which is on view at San Francisco International Airport Museums through September 13 in the International Terminal.
At first take, the venue may seem an unusual choice, but the airport, which has 23 freestanding museum cases, is a leader among airport museums in the country and was the first museum in an airport to be accredited by the American Association of Museums. This venue is well suited to the collection that has been honed over decades of collecting, and the case settings ensure the story of the pieces can be told in groups, as well as paying special attention to the showstopper pieces. The foot traffic that numbers in the tens of thousands of visitors daily does not hurt either.
Comprising just over 100 pieces in the exhibition, “Evolution of a Royal Vision” is well timed, given that this year marks the tercentennial of Meissen. The Meissen Manufactory’s “crossed swords” mark is the world’s oldest continuously used trademark and debuted on the bottom of its pieces within a few years of beginning operations in June 1710.
The pieces are all in the collection of professor and Meissen scholar Malcolm D. Gutter of San Francisco, who got his start following a visit to the Meissen Manufactory in 1976, where he was frustrated that he could not buy an authentic piece of Meissen as a souvenir of his trip there. He ended up buying a circa 1930 Blue Onion plate in Warsaw a week later, but it was not until the following December that he bought his first piece of antique Meissen while in New York City for Christmas. He was immediately hooked.
All objects are from the collection of Malcolm D. Gutter.
That piece, which he thought was a later version of the Swan service for which Meissen is famous, actually turns out to be a late Eighteenth Century example with Swan service-type decoration. It is still in Gutter’s collection by a twist of luck.
“I had thought to relieve myself of the plate because I thought it was too late [for his collecting range]. I’m glad I didn’t,” he says with just a hint of understatement. Recently, a friend provided him with the catalog to a Swan service exhibition conducted in Dresden ten years ago. Flying home from a ceramics conference in Toronto, Gutter was reading the catalog on the plane and saw a plate identical to his, which said it was from a rare service.
Bereft of the wall text seen in traditional museums, the exhibition is meticulously organized by example type and style among the display cases. Most of the pieces shown are early, circa 1720s to 1730s. “Every case has to tell an individual story,” said curator Nicole Mullen.
The exhibition itself is not meant to be a comprehensive survey of the history of Meissen or of particular patterns. Focused on Meissen service, pieces are carefully chosen for their intrinsic value, not to complete a set. Each piece is noteworthy for its importance or beauty.
“The piece is desirable in and of itself,” Gutter says. “Every piece has its own story and at the same time the collection itself †given its size †makes a powerful statement.”
Gutter started out collecting both Meissen figures as well as serviceware, but within six to eight years, sharpened his focus to just service pieces. “I realized that it was serviceware, both in terms of the forms and the painting, that most appealed to me,” he said, adding that he ended up selling or giving away all but a few of his Meissen figures that he kept.
The majority of Gutter’s acquisitions come from Europe, especially London, mostly from dealers and auctions. Following World War II, Meissen was plentiful in the United States and buying was relatively easy for collectors back in the day. Over time, European wealth grew along with an urgency for patrimony, meaning that much Meissen has been repatriated to Europe, particularly Germany. “There is very little good early Meissen coming into the salesrooms in New York anymore. The few collectors such as myself in the United States have to look to Europe to buy pieces.”
The diehard collector always remembers the one that got away, however. Gutter comes face to face with this piece every time he goes to London and visits the British Museum, where an early, white porcelain Böttger beaker, circa 1714‱5, is proudly displayed.
Back in 1976, Gutter was in the shop of antiques dealer Winfred Williams and the beaker was just sitting there for sale, whereas, today, the piece would be sold in a heartbeat. “In those days there was so much [Meissen] around … and people did not have the connoisseurship for the early pieces that they have today,” he says.
Gutter had the chance to buy the piece, which was a bit steep for his pockets at the time. “I just had a lot of ambivalence to spend that kind of money. I decided against it and I have regretted it ever since.”
The beaker, which is a standout of the museum’s collection, is “one of the earliest pieces I know of … it would greatly honor any collection,” Gutter says.
The pieces that Gutter does have in his collection are nothing to sneeze at, however.
Böttgersteinzeug (Böttger red stoneware) is named for Johann Friedrich Böttger, the alchemist who worked with scientist Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus to find the secret to making hard-paste porcelain. In 1709, after Tschirnhaus had died, Böttger debuted his first few pieces to Augustus the Strong, elector of Saxony and king of Poland. Böttger is said to have declared at the time that “Gott unser Schopfer hat gemacht aus einem Goldmacher einen Topfer (God our creator has made a goldmaker into a potter).”
The king established the hard-paste porcelain manufactory just outside Dresden, the first of its kind in Europe and which is the oldest continuously operating manufactory to this day.
A case in the exhibit devoted to Böttgersteinzeug includes such eye candy as a rare beaker and saucer in a black glaze, circa 1710‱3, and a set of teabowls, circa 1708‰9, that are among the earliest experimental pieces of Böttger stoneware and made before the Meissen Manufactory was established. A coffeepot and cover, designed by Dresden court goldsmith Johann Jacob Irminger in 1710‱3, shows a melding of influences as the spout has been modeled after Chinese Yixing ware, while the body’s overall shape is decidedly Turkish.
Several pieces from Augustus the Strong’s porcelain collection are on view in the exhibition, including a late 1600s plate from Arita, Japan, that has the fine underglaze blue painting championed by the Kakiemon potters; a circa 1700 tea bowl and saucer, with the famille verte decoration made in the Jingdezhen kilns in the Kangxi period; as well as a small, engraved dish, circa 1722′4, that is the only such example of engraved decoration of Meissen porcelain. The dish is in a cappuccino brown glaze, Meissen’s first ground color.
One display vignette focuses on the influence Chinese and Japanese porcelain had on European tastes in the late 1600s and early 1700s, particularly the Kakiemon wares from Arita, Japan. The wares here featured delicate painting in asymmetrical groupings of flowering trees, birds, animals and figures. The exhibit pairs a circa 1750 teapot with lid from China that is of the same form as an earlier teapot that was the likely inspiration for a Meissen teapot and cover, circa 1712‱5. Aside from its Chinese shape, the Meissen example in Böttger red stoneware also uses black glaze made from lacquers imported from Asia.
No exhibition on Meissen would be complete without choice examples of its hallmark blue and white decorated line. On view here is a grand baluster vase, circa 1722′3, that can be ranked in terms of importance alongside the finest blue and white works of the Yuan and early Ming period. This example is based on a classic Chinese baluster shape and the decoration is likely by Joann Caspar Ripp, a talented painter of German faience who began at Meissen in 1721.
Among the famous Blue Onion pattern examples is a stunning tureen and cover, circa 1722′4, with early caduceus marks on inside of the base and cover, signifying that the work predates the use of the crossed-swords hallmark. The design of this tureen for pâté is attributed to Johann Jacob Irminger.
Among armorial pieces in the exhibition is a plate from the St Andrews First Call Service with the arms of imperial Russia and the badge of the Order of St Andrew, circa 1744, from a service made in 1744 and delivered in 1745 to Czarina Elizabeth I, daughter of Peter I (The Great).
“Evolution of a Royal Vision” also includes several pieces from the famed Swan service, originally made for Count Heinrich von Brühl, the prime minister of Saxony. The service took seven years to complete and conveys the full luxury and whimsy of the rococo style. Highlights include a dish with the arms of Brühl and Kolowrat-Krakowska, circa 1738″9, with the crossed swords marking in underglaze blue, as well as a pair of candlesticks, circa 1739, that are copies of the original silver models by the renowned French modeler Juste-Aure Meissonnier.
Gutter, an emeritus professor of economics and decorative arts at Foothill College and the University of California Berkeley Extension, has lent some of his pieces to exhibitions before, but this is the first time the bulk of his collection will be publicly shown in toto. “I think the collection will just shine,” he said earlier this spring, “It becomes a thrill to see them in a different context.”
The museum is in the airport at S McDonnell Road and S Link Road, in the presecurity area of the International Terminal. For information, www.sfoarts.org or 650-821-6700.
