Gilt copper lid / Height: 23.5 cm (18.9 cm without lid) / Meissen 1710/13
Provenance: Coll. Dr Julius and Joan Jacobson; Coll. Ilse Bischoff, Sotheby's New York 24.2.1978 no. 75; Coll. Margarete Oppenheim, Julius Böhler 18.-20.5.1936 no. 767 T. 49 – all claims in respect of this object have been fully resolved.
Alongside the marbled and enameled early Böttger stoneware tankards and the Schwartz porcelain tankards decorated by Martin Schnell himself, the ribbed and polished Böttger stoneware tankards were among the most precious and rarest tankards. Fewer than 10 pieces of each of these types are known today.
Beer tankards were part of the very first production program of the young manufactory, as shown in the assortment published in the Leipziger Zeitung on May 4, 1710, for the first Leipzig Spring Fair.
The beer tankards were a successful model, as can be seen in one of the oldest inventories of the manufactory dated August 3, 1711 (Boltz in Keramos 96/1982, p. 35). In the section specifically dedicated to beer tankards, no fewer than 388 are listed—however, not a single tall ribbed one, but only 21 low-fired and 53 unfired ribbed ones. As far as is known, none of these have survived.
After Böttger's death (March 3, 1719), all existing stock of the manufactory was inventoried. Among the more than 2,000 items, there is only one ribbed and polished stoneware tankard listed, found in the royal porcelain warehouse in Leipzig (Boltz in Keramos 167–68/2000, p. 44) under item no. 6: “ribbed, cut, polished.”
This tankard is further described on p. 46 as: “a ribbed = cut ditto (table tankard) without lid, polished on the outside.”
This documentation highlights the rarity of ribbed stoneware tankards. This rarity likely explains why not a single ribbed beer tankard from the rich collections of the Dresden State Art Collections has been published.
In the detailed delivery list dated March 15, 1733, for the “brown polished porcelain” (Boltz, ibid., p. 113), this tankard is absent. It was therefore either sold or gifted between 1719 and 1733. The first inventory of the Japanese Palace from 1721 to May 1727 contains no ribbed tankard. Since all tankards produced between 1710 and 1713 (the end of production), except the one mentioned above, had been sold, they could not be incorporated into the royal collections.
We date our ribbed tankard between 1710 and 1713—the period of Böttger stoneware production. The Bohemian glass cutters and polishers, who had been hired by Böttger to enhance the stoneware, were dismissed with the beginning of white porcelain production in 1713.
Claus Boltz (Keramos 96/1982, Appendix I, p. 35, item no. 185) redefined the concept of ribbing based on the above-cited Leipzig inventory entry from 1711. The ribbing of the beer tankards was not—as previously assumed (Zimmermann, Frühzeit und Erfindung, p. 78 and fn. 208, and Menzhausen 1969, p. 15)—cut in afterwards but was shaped before firing. See also Pietsch/Syndram 2009, p. 44, and Pietsch Lübeck, p. 7. The cited inventory entry explicitly mentions “unfired ribbed tankards.”
The ribbing was intended to enhance the shine of the polished stoneware tankards and to create an aesthetic light reflection through the surface’s light refraction.
Comparable Pieces
We have been able to find only a few examples:
Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein, Gotha (Das rote Gold 2011: no. 124), with stoneware lid, 18.9 cm high (without lid), Boltz in Keramos 176/68 2000, fig. 48, p. 48
Collection of Adalbert Freiherr von Lanna I, Prague, 559. Lepke, November 15, 1909, no. 1516, plate 100, 18.7 cm high, stoneware lid, silver knob in the shape of a shell
Collection of Dr. René, Hamburg, Lange, April 7–9, 1938, no. 636
