Sold Ceramics - Sold Japanese Tea, Coffee and Chocolate wares 18th Century - Page 3

Object 2012141

Coffee pot

Japan

1700-1720

Height with cover 315 mm (12.40 inch), height without cover 265 mm (10.43 inch), diameter handle to spout 265 mm (10.43 inch), diameter of mouthrim 90 mm (3.54 inch), diameter of footring 150 mm (5.91 inch), weight with cover 1,826 grams (64.41 ounce (oz.)), weight cover 88 grams (3.10 ounce (oz.))

Coffee pot of conical shape on three flat modelled feet. Curved, flat pierced handle, replaced wooden domed cover with pointed knob. The hole for the mounted Dutch brass tap in the lower part is surrounded by a kiku-flower modelled in low relief. Decorated in underglaze blue, iron-red and gold with two heart-shaped panels outlined in underglaze blue and filled with a flower-head on an iron-red ground. In between stylised flowers, foliage and a cockerel with a hen. On the handle florets between scrolls.

As was the case with tea, it was not until the end of the 17th century that drinking coffee became popular in Europe. each town had his own coffee house, where everyone - which in fact meant mainly men - could enjoy drinking a cup of coffee. The Dutch East India Company, (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC), started off mainly importing coffee from Yemen, experimenting only later with plantations of their own in Java.

However, drinking coffee had for centuries already been a common practice in the Middle East. European coffee pots were therefore often modelled after Islamic copper examples. Two types of coffee pots were most frequently commissioned in Asian porcelain: conical and belly-shaped. The conical shaped pot originally came from Japan. After brewed coffee was poured into this luxurious porcelain pot, it was held warm on a stand and subsequently served through a metal tap which had later been added to the pot after it had been imported to the Netherlands. At the bottom of the pot the coffee grounds were collected. Coffee pots from China, where both types were made, don't feature a tap but a spout. (The World at Home, exhibition Groninger Museum 17 june 2017 - 31 march 2019)

Coffee pots, usually three-legged, are common in blue-and-white and in enamelled Imari. Usually there is one hole left for a tap to be fitted in Europe, occasionally there are three. (Ayers, Impey & Mallet 1990, p.213)

For an identically shaped, sized and decorated coffee pot, please see:

Porzellan aus China und Japan. Die Porzellangalerie der Landgrafen von Hessen-Kassel, (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Kassel, Berlin 1990), p.531, cat. 291.

Condition: Overall fine crazing to the glaze, a circular firing tension hairline, caused by the firing process, to the base and a glaze chip to the body.

References:

Ayers, Impey & Mallet 1990, p.213

Kassel 1990, cat. 292

Price: Sold.