Swan Service

The Swan Service (German: ''Schwanenservice'', pl, Serwis łabędzi) is a large service of baroque Meissen porcelain which was made for the First Minister of the Electorate of Saxony and favourite of king Augustus III of Poland, Heinrich von Brühl. Augustus had made Brühl the Supervisor of the Meissen works in 1733, then in August 1739 its director. The Swan Service has been called "the most famous high baroque production in Meissen porcelain",Ostrowski, 343 "a triumph of modelling and firing", and "the most fabulous tableware conceived in porcelain". After earlier work with prototypes, the Meissen designers and modellers Johann Joachim Kändler, Johann Friedrich Eberlein and (from about 1741) Johann Gottlieb Ehder created the service, which consists of over 2,200 individual pieces, between 1737 and 1741 or 1742.

Motifs

A service on such a scale and with such lavish sculptural elements was unprecedented; a later large Meissen service, the Möllendorff Dinner Service of the 1760s had under 1,000 pieces. The distinctive characteristic of the service, from which it gets its name, is its decoration in very low relief: each plate or other piece of flatware has a delicate background with radiating bands based on a scallop shell, against which there is in the central well a pair of swans on the water amid bullrushes, and a crane in the air, descending to join another on the left. The standing crane grasps a fish in his beak, and the head of another fish can be seen in the water beneath the swan on the right. ''Brühl'' in German means a damp, marshy place, so the theme of the service was a play on its owner's name.

In January 1738 Kändler spent three days in the royal natural history collection at Dresden, where "I drew all sorts of shells and examined them closely, so that the ... service could be realized in the most natural manner". Such relief backgrounds were a speciality of Meissen under Kändler, but were usually more geometrical, as in the "osier" patterns, imitating wickerwork, or the "Dulong border" (from 1743) with a rather neoclassical plant-scroll pattern.

Large pieces include opulent centrepieces, numerous candelabra, tureens. There are other items including teapots and cups and wall- sconces as well as the standard items of dinnerware. The decoration, apart from the small painted flowers of the pattern called ''indianische Blumen'' ("Indian flowers"), is themed around water and the life within, though often mixing fresh water and marine forms. Several parts of the service depict figures from Greco-Roman mythology, like Glaucus and the dolphin-riding Galatea. Almost all pieces of the original service bear the painted impaled coat of arms of Heinrich von Brühl and his wife, countess Franziska Kolowrat-Krakowsky, though pieces were also produced for other customers. Other painted decoration on the flatware pieces is gold rims and small flowers; the figures on the larger pieces are more fully painted.

History

Brühl was a loyal minister, who was allowed, as director, to commission and receive Meissen pieces free (unlike the king himself, who owned the Meissen factory). He made use of this privilege, although the Swan Service seems to have been a wedding present from the king for Brühl's marriage in November 1737. Brühl's level of entertaining was exceptional even for the period, and the ''service à la française'' used at the time required large numbers of pieces of tableware, especially for Brühl, who served 80 to 100 different dishes at every "publick entertainment."

Work was begun by Kändler in 1736, when some sample plates were produced. Fabrication of the moulds began in December 1737, and most shapes were completed by 1741; the service was delivered piecemeal as pieces were finished. Meissen still possesses the moulds, and these were used at the time and later to produce items outside the Brühl service itself, including some in limited editions today. Mostly, these lack the armorials.

Except for those pieces of the service that were on museum loan in Dresden, all other pieces of the service were lost during the last stages of World War II, when the approaching Soviet Red Army set ablaze Schloss Pförten, the family castle in today's Brody, Żary County in western Poland. It is said that the surviving pieces hidden in the castle's cellars were used by Soviet soldiers as targets in a version of clay pigeon shooting. Today, many museums have items from it, with a trickle of pieces from the original production still appearing on the art market. London auction prices in 2015 include £31,250 for a teacup and saucer, £18,125 for a slop bowl, £6,875 for small fragments of three candlesticks, £15,000 for a saucer and £8,125 for a mustard-pot cover. Bonham's, London sales of "Fine European Ceramics": 2 December 2015, Lots 46, 44 and 45; 17 June 2015, Lots 61 and 62 respectively
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J. J. Kaendler Terrine aus dem Schwanenservice, 1738, Lustheim-1.jpg, Tureen
J.F.Eberlein Glaeserkuehler fuer das Schwanenservice 1740-1.jpg, unpainted wine-cooler, J.F.Eberlein, 1740–41
J.F.Eberlein Salznapf aus dem Schwanenservice 1738-1.jpg, Salt cellar
Swan Service, confectionary dish, c. 1737-1741, Meissen, modellers Johann Joachim Kandler and Johann Friedrich Eberlein, hard-paste porcelain, overglaze enamels, gilding - Gardiner Museum, Toronto - DSC00898.JPG, Confectionery dish,
Swan Service, teacup and saucer, c. 1737-1741, Meissen, modellers Johann Joachim Kandler and Johann Friedrich Eberlein, hard-paste porcelain, overglaze enamels, gilding - Gardiner Museum, Toronto - DSC00903.JPG, Teacup and saucer,
File:Swan service in the National Museum in Warsaw (cropped).jpg, Display in the National Museum, Warsaw
J.F.Eberlein Flaschenstaender aus dem Schwanenservice 1741-1.jpg, Wine-cooler by J.F.Eberlein, 1741
Meissen-Porcelain-Schale.JPG, Nymph on a dish for sweets, with the Brühl coat of arms, but a 20th-century production
Bacciarelli Heinrich von Brühl.jpg, Heinrich von Brühl by Marcello Bacciarelli, 1758–63

Notes

References

*Coutts, Howard, ''The Art of Ceramics: European Ceramic Design, 1500–1830'', 2001, Yale University Press,
google books
*Grigaut, Paul L., "Two Pieces from the Meissen ''Swan Service''", Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 36 (3), 1956, Detroit Institute of Arts: 66–69
JSTOR
*Ostrowski, Jan K, DaCosta Kaufmann, Thomas, ''Land of the Winged Horsemen: Art in Poland, 1572–1764'', 1999, Yale University Press,
google books
*"Untermyer" (no author given), ''Highlights of the Untermyer Collection of English and Continental Decorative Arts'', 1977, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Google books
*"Wrightsman" (no author given), ''The Wrightsman Collection. Vols. 3 and 4, Furniture, Snuffboxes, Silver, Bookbindings, Porcelain'', 1970, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Google books
*Young, Carolin C., ''Apples of Gold in Settings of Silver: Stories of Dinner as a Work of Art'', 2002, Simon and Schuster,
google books

Further reading

*Pietsch, Ulrich (Ed.). ''Schwanenservice – Meissener Porzellan für Heinrich Graf von Brühl'', Berlin: Edition Leipzig, 2000,
*Cassidy-Geiger, Maureen, "From Barlow to Büggel", ''Keramos'', 119 (1988), pp. 54–68, for a discussion of the graphic sources
*Walcha, Otto, ''Meissner Porzellan. Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart''. Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 1986, 8th Edition,
*Berling, Karl, "Das Brühlsche Schwanenservice", ''Belvedere'' 10, Darmstadt 1925, pp. 80–85

External links

*{{Commons category-inline
Swan Service in the National Museum in Warsaw

Meissen porcelain
German porcelain
1730s works
1740s works
Individual pieces of porcelain
Individual patterns of tableware