coffee-pot
- Museum number
- 1923,0314.154.CR
- Description
-
Coffee-pot and cover; hard-paste porcelain; pear-shaped; moulded acanthus leaves in relief on domed cover, neck and lower part of body, enamelled blue; decorated with gallant scenes and with gilt strapwork; gilt handle, spout and rims; unmarked.
- Production date
-
1720 (circa; made)
-
1725-35 (circa; painted)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 18.50 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- This Meissen coffee-pot is from a partial tea and coffee set in the Museum, which also includes a teapot (1923,0314.155) and a sugar-box (1923,0314.153). The porcelain tea and coffee set was made at the factory about 1720-25. It was probably sold in the white to an independent decorator ('Hausmaler', or house painter). The lavish use of gold and the style of the painting points to the Seuter workshop of Augsburg goldsmiths. Augsburg was a major centre for independent enamel decoration, as well as engravers, in the first half of the 18th century; See Siegfried Ducret, 'Meißner Porzellan bemalt in Augsburg, 1718 bis um 1750',1972).
The shape with the applied acanthus leaves was probably designed by the Dresden court goldsmith, Johann Jacob Irminger (1635-1724). By the 1730s it was probably considered unfashionable and moderinzed with colourful enamel painting and gold added in Augsburg. The subjects were often based on print sources. There are two scenes on the coffee-pot, the engraved sources for both have been identified by Siegfried Ducret; the three figures drinking derive from a print by Louise Madeleine Horthemels-Cochin (1686-1767), after Nicolas Lancret (1690-1743), 'Quoy! N'avoir pour vous trois . . .' (see P&D 1865,1014.321); and the couple on the reverse side appear on the right of an engraving by François Joullain (1697-1778), also afters Lancret, 'La Récréation Champêtre', published in Paris in 1734, an example is in the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden (see Ducret 1972, figs.204, 206). The figures are reversed in the engraving, however, the painting on the porcelain correctly follows the original painting, dated to the early 1720s (Christie's, New York).
Ducret originally identified the decoration as from Abraham Seuter's workshop, but it was later attributed incorrectly to the Auffenwerth workshop.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1923
- Acquisition notes
- Presented by the Viscount Dillon, F.S.A., in memory of his son.
- Department
- Britain, Europe and Prehistory
- Registration number
- 1923,0314.154.CR