coffee-pot
- Museum number
- 1921,1215.83.CR
- Description
-
Coffee-pot and cover; porcelain; scale-blue ground and gilt-edged panels with musicians in pseudo-Chinese style; birds; insects; gilt flower knop on cover; scroll handle.
- Production date
- 1770 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 21.60 centimetres (to top of finial)
-
Height: 8.60 inches
-
Width: 18 centimetres (max width including handle and spout)
- Curator's comments
- The figures of musicians are probably based on a series of Chinoiserie musicians designed by Antoine Watteau and engraved by Edme Jeaurat, in Paris about 1731.
For a related cup and saucer with the same pattern, see 1921,12-15,119.
Text from Dawson 2007:
The rich and inventive decoration on these pieces might mark them out as products decorated in London, even though the blue scale ground would have been painted under the glaze at the factory. However, despite the high-quality gilding, such pieces are thought to have been painted at Worcester. Butterflies, birds and Chinese-style musicians in elaborately shaped panels against a blue scale ground embellished with profuse gilding are exceptional, and few matching items are known. These are all parts of tea or coffee services. A coffee cup and saucer from the Zorensky Collection was on the London market in March 2004. A tea cup and saucer are in the Klepser Collection, and other examples are in public collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
That the coffee pot was highly prized in 1909 is evident from the receipt of 11 December of Mallett and Son, of The Octagon, Milson Street, Bath, to F. Lloyd for the sum of £395 (see the Object file, 1921,1215.1-165 in BEP). Another invoice addressed to Frank Lloyd from Albert Amor of St James's, London, dated 31 May 1924 for 'an exceptionally rare old Worcester Tea Cup & Saucer of the Dr Wall period, decorated with fan shaped panels containing Watteau figures and small circular medallions containing butterflies upon a powder blue ground richly gilt with foliage' shows that the Lloydes probably acquired another teacup and saucer from this set. These cost £135 and were noted as 'Formerly the property of the Earl of Dudley and purchased at the Himley Hall sale on May 19th 1924'.
Chinese-style musicians enjoyed a vogue in mid-eighteenth-century England. Two magnificent candlestick figures in arbours were made at the Chelsea porcelain factory around 1758-70: examples are in the British Museum (P&E 1948, 12-3.58 and 59).
- Location
- On display (G46/dc21)
- Condition
- April 2006 - chips to finial.
- Acquisition date
- 1921
- Department
- Britain, Europe and Prehistory
- Registration number
- 1921,1215.83.CR
