Organization: Meissen Porcelain Manufactory
Origin: Germany, Meissen
Date: 1750s
Complex: Porcelain Tea and Coffee Service
Material: porcelain
Technique: polychrome painting, gilding
Dimensions: cup 4.6 cm high, 8.2 cm diameter
Current Collection: The State Hermitage Museum
Inventory Number: ZF-17737
Hermitage ID: 352519
Rudanovsky Connection: Entered the Hermitage in 1919 from the collection of A. K. Rudanovsky.
A Meissen cup and saucer of the 1750s, with a purple wave pattern and a bouquet of flowers.
Cup and Saucer (ZF-17737). The State Hermitage Museum.
The cup entered the Hermitage in 1919, transferred through the Branch for the Protection of Monuments of Art and Antiquities from the collection of A. K. Rudanovsky. It is not currently on permanent display.
It is a small cup — 4.6 centimetres high — with a purple wave pattern, a green handle and a gilt rim, and a saucer painted with a bouquet.
The Object
The cup is rounded, with a scalloped rim and a small foot.
Its body is decorated with a pattern of purple waves, painted in soft, horizontal bands, and its rim is gilded. The handle is green, modelled as a branch or a scroll.
The saucer is white, with a scalloped gilt edge, and it carries a bouquet of flowers: a parrot tulip, convolvulus, and small blue and red blossoms.
The Purple Waves
The purple waves are the cup’s pattern.
They run around the body in horizontal bands, with soft, blurred edges, and they imitate the folds of a drapery or the surface of water. The purple is applied in washes and blended.
The pattern is unusual: it is abstract, and it relies on colour and movement rather than on a motif.
The Green Handle
The handle is green.
It is modelled as a branch or a scroll, with a small leaf where it meets the body, and it is painted in a natural green. The colour contrasts with the purple waves.
Handles of this kind are a feature of Meissen in the 1750s: they imitate nature, and they add a note of the garden to the cup.
The Saucer’s Flowers
The saucer carries a bouquet.
It is painted in the centre, with a parrot tulip, convolvulus and small blossoms, and it is surrounded by scattered flowers. The bouquet is loose and naturalistic.
Flower painting was a speciality of Meissen, and the saucer is a fine example of the factory’s skill.
The Parrot Tulip
The parrot tulip is the bouquet’s centre.
It is a striped tulip, with red and yellow petals, and it is painted with great care: the stripes, the edges, the highlights. Its form is twisted and irregular.
Parrot tulips were a fashionable flower in the eighteenth century, and they were a favourite subject of porcelain painters.
Meissen
The cup was made at Meissen.
Meissen was the first European factory to produce true porcelain, and it was the most important manufactory of the eighteenth century. Its painters, modellers and gilders set the standard for the industry.
The cup belongs to the factory’s mature period, when its painting was at its finest.
The 1750s
The cup was made in the 1750s.
It was a period of great activity at Meissen, when the factory produced large services for the courts of Europe. The taste of the period favoured flowers, natural handles and delicate colours.
The cup belongs to that moment, and it shows the Meissen style at its most refined.
The Service
The cup is part of a tea and coffee service.
The service included cups, saucers, a teapot, a coffee pot, a sugar bowl and a tray, all decorated with flowers and gilt rims. The cup is one of its smallest pieces.
Tea and coffee services were a luxury of the eighteenth-century table, and they were made in great numbers by the European factories.
The Cup
The cup is small and rounded.
It holds 4.6 centimetres of liquid, and it is designed for tea or coffee. Its walls are thin, and its rim is scalloped and gilded.
The cup’s shape is simple and delicate, and it is the vehicle for the purple waves and the gilt rim.
The Gilt Rim
The rim is gilded.
It is a thin gold line, and it catches the light. The gilding was applied last, and it wears first where the lips touched it.
A gilt rim is a small detail, but it frames the cup and gives it a finished look.
The Cup’s Shape
The cup is rounded, with a small foot.
It is a tea cup, and its shape is designed to be held between the fingers. The scalloped rim gives it a delicate, flower-like edge.
The shape is typical of Meissen cups of the 1750s, and it is one of the signs of the factory’s elegance.
The Collector
The cup came to the Hermitage with the Rudanovsky collection.
Rudanovsky collected European porcelain alongside paintings, drawings, glass and miniatures, and his collection included German services and decorative objects.
The cup is therefore a double document: of Meissen in the 1750s and of a Russian collector’s taste.
The Palette
The palette is delicate.
White, purple, green, pink, yellow, blue and gold: the colours are soft and harmonious, and they give the cup its charm. The purple waves and the green handle are the dominant notes.
The palette is typical of Meissen in the 1750s, and it gives the cup its refinement.
The Saucer’s Edge
The saucer’s edge is scalloped and gilded.
It is a thin gold line, and it follows the waves of the rim. The edge protects the saucer and gives it a finished look.
Scalloped and gilded edges are a feature of Meissen saucers of the period, and they frame the painted bouquet.
The Size
At 4.6 centimetres, the cup is small.
It fits in the palm of a hand, and it holds a single portion. Its smallness is part of its character: it is an object made for one person and one moment.
Small objects demand close attention, and this cup rewards it.
The Gilding
The gilding is restrained.
It is used on the rim, on the handle’s edges and on the saucer’s border, and it frames the painting without dominating it. The gold is fired and burnished, and it catches the light.
Restrained gilding is characteristic of Meissen in the 1750s: the factory trusted its painting, and it used gold as a frame rather than a subject.
Provenance
The cup carries the inventory number ZF-17737. It entered the Hermitage in 1919, transferred through the Branch for the Protection of Monuments of Art and Antiquities from the collection of A. K. Rudanovsky.
In the Hermitage
The cup is preserved in the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg and is not on permanent display.
It is a small, charming object, and it preserves a moment of the Meissen table: a purple wave, a green handle and a bouquet of flowers.
It is a small cup, and it has kept its purple waves and its parrot tulip for almost three hundred years, which is what porcelain is for.
And it is still a cup, and someone, somewhere, would still like to drink from it.
It has done that for three centuries, quietly, on a shelf in Saint Petersburg. And it is still waiting for the tea.
