Late 18th Century Staffordshire Pearlware Chinoiserie Coffee Pot, Blue and White, Chinese House Pattern

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Staffordshire Pearlware Chinoiserie Coffee Pot, Blue and White, Chinese House Pattern
Circa 1785

This tall, elegant pearlware coffee pot is … Read more Staffordshire Pearlware Chinoiserie Coffee Pot, Blue and White, Chinese House Pattern
Circa 1785

This tall, elegant pearlware coffee pot is painted in underglaze blue with a chinoiserie landscape of the type that collectors call the "Chinese House" pattern. The pear-shaped body rises from a spreading circular foot to a short neck, and is fitted with a domed cover with a ball finial, a plain loop handle and a curved spout. The body is painted with a two-story pavilion with a tiered roof and a finial, standing on an island behind a trellis fence, flanked by a willow and a fir-like tree, with a flight of birds overhead and further wooded islets on the water below. A band of crossed lattice with a stylized fringe encircles the neck, and the cover is painted with a related island landscape. The spout is picked out with a sprig of leaves and a dash at the lip.

Painted chinoiserie of this kind is the earliest and most characteristic decoration on English pearlware. The pattern reproduces, in a free hand, the island-and-pavilion compositions of Chinese export porcelain that filled the tea tables of Georgian Britain, and it was painted at many potteries in Staffordshire and Yorkshire between about 1775 and 1800. Coffee pots are considerably scarcer than teapots in these wares, and an example of this height and quality is unusual.

At nearly a foot high, the pot holds its own on a sideboard, dresser shelf or mantel, and reads as a single strong blue and white accent in a dining room or kitchen with painted or natural wood furniture. It pairs equally well with Chinese export porcelain and with other English pearlware and creamware of the period.

Height: 11 3/4 inches (29.9 cm)
Width: 5 inches (12.7 cm)
Depth: 5 inches (12.7 cm)

Provenance: The Laver Collection of English Pottery.

Historical Context: Pearlware is creamware whitened by a small addition of cobalt to the glaze, which cancels the natural yellow tint of the lead glaze and gives the ware the cool, bluish-white surface of Chinese porcelain. Josiah Wedgwood introduced his version, which he called "Pearl White," in 1779, though a similar "china glaze" was already being used by other Staffordshire potters in the mid-1770s specifically for blue-painted chinoiserie wares like this coffee pot. Made in quantity and sold at a fraction of the price of imported porcelain, these wares allowed households of moderate means to lay a fashionable blue and white table for tea and coffee, which by the 1780s had become daily rituals in British domestic life. See less