Anna Burnside
Head of Sale
Lot 176
A superb Worcester coffee pot and cover, circa 1753
1 December 2025, 13:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street£5,000 - £7,000
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Jim Peake
Head of Department
Fergus Gambon
Director
A superb Worcester coffee pot and cover, circa 1753
Of plain baluster form, with an S-shaped handle, the low domed cover with a mushroom finial, enamelled in the famille verte palette with tall millet plants, a tiny colourful bird perched on a high stalk, the reverse with angular flowering prunus, scattered insects including two ladybirds, the spout and cover with trailing sprigs, blue feathered comma motifs flanking the upper handle terminal, 18cm high, an incised line in the footrim (2)
Footnotes
Provenance
Sotheby's, 20 October 1978, lot 46
John Raison Collection, Christie's, 2 November 1998, lot 99
Miles Collection, Simon Spero exhibition, 2015, no.28
Literature
White, Mary, Drinking at the Whites' House, Vol.2, 2021, p.344, fig.a
Compared with teapots, coffee pots were extremely rare in the output of English porcelain factories of the early 1750s. Silver may have continued a little longer as the preferred material and indeed the elegant shape of the present lot owes inspiration to a silver predecessor. While the palette here is Chinese, the decoration is derived from a Japanese aesthetic, the millet plants featuring in Quail pattern pieces directly from Japan or through the lens of versions made in Continental Europe.
The present lot was one of two early Worcester coffee pots in the Collection of John Raison. His other example was also decorated in oriental style, with a Chinese pattern of the Yongzheng period. It was subsequently sold as part of the R David Butti Collection at Bonhams on 10 May 2006, lot 26. Both coffee pots are of attractive small size and are marked with a single incised line cut into the footrim.