- Museum number
- 1981,1209.1
- Description
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Dessert plate, 'Peitschenhieb' service; hard-paste porcelain, cast, decorated with a whiplash motif in low relief and painted in underglaze blue, the rim pierced.
- Production date
- 1903-1904 (designed and made)
- Dimensions
-
Diameter: 21.80 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
- See also 1988,0110.1
See also 1990,0711.1
Text from J. Rudoe, 'Decorative Arts 1850-1950. A catalogue of the British Museum collection'. 2nd ed. no. 295.
Van de Velde trained as a painter in Antwerp before turning to design in 1892. He designed rooms and furniture in Paris for both Bing's Maison de l'Art Nouveau in 1895 and for Meier-Graefe's La Maison Moderne in 1898, founding in that year his own decorating firm near Brussels. Having received commissions from German clients since 1897, he settled in Berlin in 1900, and went on to design in other fields such as silver and ceramics. After his move to Weimar in 1902, to become artistic adviser to the Duke of Saxe-Weimar and then professor of the new school of applied arts, a number of his silver designs were executed by the court jewellers, Theodor Müller.
See Decorative Arts 1850-1950, Cat. 294 ( 1988.0110.1) for discussion of the whole service. For two of van de Velde's studies for this plate in the Archives Henry van de Velde, Brussels, E.N.S.A.A.V., inv. 1253-4, see Houston 1976, Institute for the Arts, Rice University, 'Art Nouveau Belgium France', Y. Brunhammer at al, no. 491. Each drawing is labelled 'Kgl. Porzellan-Manufactur Meissen' with the figures '1' and 'iv'. They both vary from the plates as executed: neither has the pattern of squares within the whiplash motif.
This plate is unusual in having a pierced rim which appears to be a combination of two van de Velde designs. In addition to the painted whiplash motif, he also designed a plain white border pattern comprising the same moulded relief whiplash and a pierced motif filling the rest of the rim (J. Just, 'Meissener Jugendstil Porzellan', Leipzig 1983, pl. 90). Along the edge of the pierced motif is a row of pierced slashes, as on the British Museum plate. According to Just, the pierced model was too expensive to produce and was rejected by both designer and manufacturer. In view of the cost of the pierced work, the factory may have decided to retain just the simple pierced slashes on some pieces, which were then painted as usual.
A modification which appears to be the factory's own is to be found on a plate in the Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt, where the whiplash motif in blue is combined with a chequerboard pattern in gold filling the rest of the border (C.B. Heller, 'Kataloge des Hessischeen Landesmuseum Nr. 12. Jugendstil. Kunst um 1900', Darmstadt 1982. no. 406)
Information supplementary to Rudoe 1994:
See also M. Collins, 'Towards Post-Modernism, Design since 1851', London, British Museum, revised ed. 1994, fig. 33.
- Location
- On display (G48/dc1)
- Acquisition date
- 1981
- Department
- Britain, Europe and Prehistory
- Registration number
- 1981,1209.1
