# Plate from the Swan Service > Johann Joachim Kaendler, chief modeler, Meissen Porcelain Manufactory - c. 1737-1741 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/johann-joachim-kaendler/meissen-swan-service-cleveland/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-18 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Johann Joachim Kaendler, chief modeler, Meissen Porcelain Manufactory - **Date:** c. 1737-1741 - **Medium:** Hard-paste porcelain, molded in low relief, with polychrome enamels and gilding - **Dimensions:** Diameter 42 cm (16 9/16 in.) - **Object type:** Ceramic - **Period:** German (Saxon), Baroque to early Rococo, eighteenth century - **Current location:** Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio (Decorative Art and Design, gallery 216A, French and German) - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A single plate, 42 centimetres across, from a dinner, coffee, tea and chocolate service of more than 2,200 pieces that Meissen's chief modeler Johann Joachim Kaendler and his colleague Johann Friedrich Eberlein built for Heinrich Graf von Bruhl between about 1736 and 1741. Bruhl was prime minister of Saxony, director of the Meissen manufactory, and by his own government's later account a man who had diverted more than five million talers of public money into a private life of watches, wigs and porcelain. He died in disgrace weeks after his king, in October 1763, as Prussian occupation left Saxony broken by the Seven Years War, and his heirs spent years selling off what he had built.This plate's own paper trail, as the Cleveland Museum of Art records it, runs from Bruhl through a descendant, Count Szembek, at the Bruhl palace in Warsaw, to the New York dealers Rosenberg and Stiebel, refugees themselves from Nazi persecution of an older Frankfurt art-dealing family, who gave it to Cleveland in 1951. That route appears to have taken the plate out of Poland before 1945, the year Soviet troops burned and looted the Bruhl family's other seat at Pforten, where most of what remained of the service is reported, on a single hedged and only partly corroborated account, to have been destroyed.Pieces of the service that did survive are now scattered across at least a dozen public collections on three continents, from Chicago to Nuremberg to Warsaw, and a trickle still reaches the auction room. No scholarly source consulted for this record gives a reliable total for how many of the original 2,200-plus pieces exist today; published estimates range from about one hundred to several hundred, and none of them is sourced to a documented census. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1737-1763** Heinrich Graf von Bruhl `[documented]` (commission and ownership) Made for Bruhl, director of the Meissen manufactory and prime minister of Saxony, as part of a dinner, coffee, tea and chocolate service of more than 2,200 pieces produced c. 1736-1741/42. He owned it until his death at Dresden on 28 October 1763. - **1763** The Bruhl family, heirs and descendants `[unknown]` (inheritance and gradual dispersal) Bruhl's estate was sequestered after his death, investigated, and substantially restored to his family; his picture gallery was sold to Catherine II of Russia in 1768 and his sons sold further property gradually over subsequent years. No source consulted documents the specific chain by which this individual plate passed within the family after 1763, or when it reached the Warsaw branch of the family at the Bruhl palace. The gap between 1763 and the Szembek ownership recorded by Cleveland is not bridged by any source found. - **undated** Count Szembek, Palais Bruhl, Warsaw `[documented]` (family ownership) Recorded in the Cleveland Museum of Art's own published provenance for this plate as a direct descendant of the Bruhl family, owning the plate at the Bruhl palace in Warsaw. No dates are given by the museum, and this record could not independently verify the genealogical connection beyond the museum's own statement. - **-1951** Rosenberg and Stiebel, Inc., New York `[documented]` (dealer sale) Acquired by the New York dealership descended from the Frankfurt firm founded in 1874 by Jakob Rosenbaum, whose later generations relocated to Amsterdam, London and finally New York from 1939 in the course of fleeing Nazi persecution. No acquisition date from the Szembek line is given. - **1951-present** Cleveland Museum of Art `[documented]` (gift) Accessioned 21 March 1951 as a thirty-fifth-anniversary gift from Rosenberg and Stiebel, Inc. Shown in the museum's own 35th Anniversary Exhibition, 20 June to 30 September 1951, and published in the museum's Bulletin later that year and in its 1958 handbook as catalogue number 312. The Cleveland Museum of Art's own records flag this acquisition as not involving Nazi-era provenance concerns. ## Open questions - How many pieces of the Swan Service survive today, across all museums and private collections combined. No source consulted for this record gives a documented total; the Frick Collection's own figure of about one hundred is the most specific number found, and it is not sourced to a published census. - When did Count Szembek acquire the plate, and what is the documented genealogical link between the Szembek family and the Bruhl family. Cleveland's own catalogue states the relationship as fact but gives no supporting detail. - When exactly did Rosenberg and Stiebel acquire the plate from the Szembek line, and by what route did it leave Poland. The gap between an undated Warsaw ownership and the 1951 Cleveland gift is not documented in the sources consulted. - Is the account of the 1945 destruction at Pforten, including the specific claim that surviving pieces were used as targets by Soviet soldiers, corroborated by any source beyond the single secondary citation this record could not independently examine. - Does any part of the large table centrepiece described in the general literature on the service, with its shells and mythological marine figures, survive intact today, or only as fragments distributed among the same museums that hold the tableware. - What did the Christie's New York sale of a Swan Service tureen in May 2014 actually hammer for, with premium separated. This record could not confirm the widely repeated figure against a primary Christie's source and has omitted it rather than repeat an unverified number. - What was the precise nature and extent of Bruhl's Kabbalah book collection, cited in general biographical accounts of him without a supporting inventory or bibliography this record could locate. ## Sources - [1] Cleveland Museum of Art, catalogue entry for 'Plate from the Swan Service,' accession 1951.103. - [2] Cleveland Museum of Art, Open Access API, structured data record for accession 1951.103, including provenance note, credit line, creators, dimensions, exhibitions and citations, accessed 2026-08-18. - [3] Helen Foote, 'Important Additions to the Porcelain Collection,' The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 38, no. 8 (October 1951): 199-200. Citation supplied by the Cleveland Museum of Art's own catalogue record; the article text itself was not independently examined for this record. - [4] The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook (Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958), catalogue no. 312. Citation supplied by the Cleveland Museum of Art's own catalogue record; the handbook text itself was not independently examined for this record. - [5] Art Institute of Chicago, Open Access API, catalogue entry for 'Dish from the Swan Service,' object 74737. - [6] The Frick Collection, 'Cocktails with a Curator: Meissen Swan Service,' curator Xavier F. Salomon. - [7] Wikipedia, 'Swan Service.' Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with a specialist Meissen catalogue raisonne; used here for the 1945 Pforten account (itself further sourced by Wikipedia to note 8 below), the production chronology, and the museum list. - [8] Rachel L. Denyer, Morgan C. T. Denyer and Howell G. M. Edwards, Armorial Porcelain: The Genesis (Springer, 2024), pp. 148-151. Identified as the underlying citation for the 1945 Pforten destruction account via Wikipedia's own reference list; the book itself was not independently examined for this record and the claim is reported with that caveat. Not independently examined; identified only via Wikipedia's own reference list (source 7), which is the URL given here pending direct verification of the original 2024 book. - [9] Wikipedia, 'Heinrich von Bruhl.' Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with a scholarly biography; used here for Bruhl's career, wealth, the post-death inquiry, and the estate settlement. - [10] Heinrich Graf von Bruhl (heinrich-graf-von-bruehl.de), 'Biography of Bruhl.' - [11] Wikipedia, 'Brody, Zary County.' Tertiary source, flagged for replacement; used here for the Seven Years War and 1945 destruction of the Bruhl family palace at Pforten/Brody. - [12] Sachsische Biografie, Institut fur Sachsische Geschichte und Volkskunde, entry on Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775). - [13] German Wikipedia, 'Schwanenservice.' Tertiary source, flagged for replacement; used here to corroborate modelers named and the shell-mirror plate form. - [14] Bonhams, 'A Meissen dish from the Swan Service, circa 1738-39,' sale of 4 July 2024, lot 164. - [15] Bonhams, 'A pair of Meissen circular dishes from the Swan Service, circa 1738-39,' sale of 3 December 2024, lot 146. - [16] Bonhams, 'A very rare Meissen teacup and saucer from the Swan Service, circa 1738,' Fine European Ceramics, 2 December 2015, lot 46. - [17] Bonhams, 'A very rare Meissen chocolate cup and saucer from the Swan service, circa 1739-40,' The Marouf Collection, Part I, 5 December 2012, lot 39. - [18] Wikimedia Commons, category and file-level licence metadata for images used in this record, verified via the Commons API extmetadata field for each file. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.