A Meissen Hausmaler tankard, with silver-gilt mounts, the porcelain Circa 1720-25, the decoration slightly later, the mounts Elias Adam, Augsburg, 1721-25

Margarethe (née Knapp, 1878-1949) and Dr. Franz (1871-1950) Oppenheimer, Berlin & Vienna (by 1927) (no. 44 in black);

Dr. Fritz Mannheimer (1890-1939), Amsterdam & Paris, inv. no. Por. 188 (acquired between 1936 and 1939);

Dienststelle Mühlmann, The Hague (acquired from the Estate of the above in 1941 on behalf of the Sonderauftrag Linz for the proposed Führermuseum);

On deposit at Kloster Stift Hohenfurth;

On deposit at Salzbergwerk Bad Aussee;

Recovered from the above by Allied Monuments Officers and transferred to the Central Collecting Point Munich (MCCP inv. no. 2367/16);

Repatriated from the above to Holland between 1945 and 1949;

Loaned by the Dutch State to the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam in 1952 and transferred to the museum in 1960;

Restituted by the above to the heirs of Margarethe and Franz Oppenheimer in 2021

Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Sammlung Margarete und Franz Oppenheimer. Meissener Porzellan, Berlin, 1927, no. 44, pl. 14

Franz Kieslinger, Verzeichnis der Restbestände der Sammlung Mannheimer, [S.I.], 1941, p. 20, cat. no. 108

Abraham L. den Blaauwen, Meissen porcelain in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2000, p. 202, cat. no. 120

It is noted by den Blaauwen that the Seuter family did not generally incorporate cartouches in their gilt decoration, as seen on the present tankard. A Hausmaler tankard with a shield shape cartouche is in the Kunstsammlungen & Museen, Augsburg; and a part-coffee service with cartouches is in the Spreewald-Museum, Lübbenau, illustrated in Ducret, 1971, p. 184, abb. 198 and pp. 238-40, abbs. 314-318.

Elias Adam, Silversmith

Elias Adam became a master in Augsburg in 1703, and spent the first part of his career specializing in mounting in silver and silver-gilt various precious materials: carved agate, ruby glass, painted enamels, carved ivory, even ostrich shells. Around 1720 he was mounting Augsburg-decorated faience, including pieces from the workshop of Bartholomaus Seuter. This connection may have brought him to the attention of the Dresden court, who started having Adam mount their new precious material, the “white gold” of Meissen, around 1722 – the same year the factory began commissioning the Seuter workshop to decorate its white porcelain with gilded decoration.  

For the rest of the 1720s, Adam’s workshop production was almost exclusively mounts for Meissen porcelain, particularly coffee pots and tankards. On the latter form, he displayed a sophisticated French-influenced Régence style, with chased interlace strapwork on matted grounds. Adam finished not just Augsburg-decorated pieces but also factory-decorated items, and mounted more Meissen than any other silversmith of the period. His work for Dresden tapered off after 1729, when the factory began sending less to Augsburg for gilding, but the backstock of locally-decorated pieces kept him occupied, and he continued to supply some mounts, and spoons for cased sets, through the 1730s.