A SILVER-GILT MOUNTED MEISSEN PORCELAIN HAUSMALEREI TANKARD AND COVER

The Seuter workshop in Augsburg was established by brothers Abraham and Bartolomäus Seuter. During the early 18th century, the area was home to a large number of independent decorators known as hausmalerei. These enterprising workers would acquire old stock models from the Meissen factory which they decorated with gilt and enamels, often with imagined Asian scenes rendered in gilt, like this one, known as goldchinesen. The Seuters' renown was such that in 1726, the Augsburg City Council provided express permission to Bartolomäus to work as a porcelanschmeltzer (porcelain enameler).

As a means of counteracting what the Meissen factory viewed essentially as intellectual property theft, they eliminated the sale of unmarked white porcelain after 1730. Despite this early competition, the rise of other porcelain manufactories on the Continent were soon a larger threat, and the influx of choice in the market caused the hausmalerei workshops to wane. In fact, as Ulrich Pietsch posits in his book, Early Meissen Porcelain: The Wark Collection from the Cumer Museum of Art & Gardens (2011, pp. 43-46), the proliferation of Meissen forms at the hands of the hausmalerei only helped to spread the renown of the factory and deepen their good reputation.