Meissen pair of putti w/ sweet meat baskets, Q: about incised numbering.

OK so the first two pics show the very light incised numbers the boy says "d 80" at least I think it looks like a script "d" and below very faint "136" the girl says "d 81" and "136" below that. Hope you can see these. the later pics show the familiar crossed swords and some colored numbers. My question what does those numbers refer to?

 

the colored numbers one says 31 in orange and 91 in green the other says 99. Id be interested in what all those mean.

 

I have no idea about the ceramics, but these are putti:

 

The numbers can mean a lot of different things. Different companies had different ways of marking their items.

Could be a style number, a pattern number, a date system, decorator. Anything the company wanted to record.
It is not a uniform marking system that every company used.

Putti are naked cherubs babies (corrected) .

Here is a reference for the Meissen mark, including copies. I haven't read it, so don't know if they mention incised marks or not.
https://antique-marks.com/meissen-marks.html

 

I’ve had a few of the Meissen ‘Full Green Vine’ pieces but nothing decorative or figural, just dinnerware. They are very pretty.

 

Sorry about the putti confusion. I was just so excited, I just picked these figures up yesterday and wanted to show them off. And ask about the nubmers.

 

Lovely! On the subject of taxonomy of mythical creatures, I always thought that putti had no wing and cherubs did. But apparently it's not that simple. Now I'm confused.

 

That one looks like Winston Churchill.

 

You're correct. It was late last night. I chose the wrong word. Edit button was still showing so I corrected.

 

Hmm, I just did a definition check. It does say winged cherubic infant.

 

Me too.

 

What was the source of that definition? Putto/putti are words I see regularly because they regularly turn up on cameos & what distinguishes them from cherubs or Cupid is that they do not have wings, just pudgy baby boys, often getting into mischief.

The definition you found sounds like this sort of thing:



But the way I usually see the word used is for something like this (yes, showing it again):

 

Just a quick google with the top three responses saying basically the same thing in different words.

 

I can only say that dictionaries & common usage are out of synch on this one. It leaves the language with no single word for these little guys if 'putto' is reserved for well behaved ones with wings, who already had 'cherub'.

 

I'd say the impressed numbers are mold numbers, you know--"in the mold." The others will remain a mystery.

 

Well, shall we make an executive decision and leave it where it worked best for us: putti have no wings, but cherubs do?
Maybe I shouldn't even mention "sweet meat" vs "sweetmeat" ?!?
Sorry Sunday Silence, this isn't really helpful helping you find an answer, is it?
Just another rabbit hole of distraction.

 

Sounds good to me.
I vote Yea.

 

The sculptor known as Clodion made a whole career doing 'Bacchic' subjects. If you Google his work, you'll see how even museums & big auction houses call these little figures 'putti' much of the time. Here's a case of both the winged & the unwinged being lumped together by that name:

https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/229684?position=1

When they appear in allegorical tableaux they are sometimes called geniuses. You also see them described as children, but what I see are babies engaged in activities beyond what any real baby could do.

The dictionaries seem all to be copying one from another, that originally putti were, like the original meaning of the word in Italian, little boys & progressed in art from the profane to the sacred, becoming no different from cherubs.

But scratching my head over: 'in Baroque art the putto came to represent the omnipresence of God.' The baroque was the absolute heyday of the little wingless mischievous ones. They were just as present in art of the day as the winged ones. When did they get the name putto taken away from them?

I'm starting a Putto Rights movement!

@sunday silence What word did you really mean? They look too prosperous to be peasants Is he eating porridge? What's the woman doing with that goose? Not my field (as you can tell). What are these serving pieces called/used for?

 

Oh Lordy, I hope it's not that Leda again! Perhaps the set is a post-revolutionary, allegorical cautionary tale for Louis Seize and Marie Antoinette. They are portrayed playing peasant at the Hameau... Louis is eating cake (sweetmeats) and Marie is hoping to be rescued into exile by Virginia shipping magnate and crown sympathiser James "Swan". That's the great thing about the latitudes and platitudes of material culture theories. Anything goes, the wilder the better. I would tell that story to my guests at the dinner table, simply for the entertainment value alone!

 

So "Full Green Vine" is the pattern, and these are scalloped, no trim, according to the way Replacements categorizes them. https://www.replacements.com/webquote/mssfugvin.htm

But no figural pieces there, either.