Tuesday, August 21, 2012

To Serve and Project: A Meissen Coffee Pot and Cover, c. 1740

Coffee Pot
Meissen Porcelain Factory
circa 1740
The Victoria & Albert Museum



Here’s a lovely pear-shaped coffee pot made by Germany’s Meissen Porcelain Factory and, possibly, decorated with enamels in the Netherlands. The coffee pot and cover are slightly gilded and the body of the pot depicts a pastoral scene of a shepherd who sits beside a stream. Near him a girl is spinning wool. They are surrounded by sheep who graze by a windmill and their faithful dog lies at their feet. 


The pot features a handsome scrolled loop handle and a projecting lip for pouring. The domed cover is typical of mid-Eighteenth Century Meissen Porcelain. It’s believed that once the pot was made in Germany, it was exported to Holland where it was painted. However, some curators challenge this idea and suggest that it was painted in England. 

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