COFFEE IN RELATION TO THE FINE ARTS Page 5

The coffee pot illustrated (1681) formerly belonged to the East India Company, and is preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It is almost identical with a tea pot (1670) in the same museum, except that its straight spout is fixed nearer to the base, as is its leather-covered handle, which, with the sockets into which it fits, forms a long recurving scroll fixed opposite to and in line with the spout. Its cover, which is hinged to the upper handle socket, is high like that of the 1670 tea-pot; but instead of the straight outline of that cover, this is slightly waved and surmounted by a somewhat flat button-shaped knob. Engraved on the body is a shield of arms, a chevron between three crosses fleury, surrounded by tied feathers. The inscription is, "The Guift of Richard Sterne Eq to ye Honorable East India Compa."

This pot is nine and three-quarters inches in height by four and seven-eighths inches in diameter at the base; it bears the London hall-marks of 1681–82 and the maker's mark "G.G." in a shaped shield, thought by Jackson to be George Garthorne's mark.

The 1689 coffee pot illustrated is the property of King George V. It bears the London hall-marks of 1689–90, and the mark of Francis Garthorne. Its tall, round body tapers toward the top, and has applied moldings on the base and rim. Its spout is straight and tapers upward to the level of the rim of the pot. Its handle is of ebony, crescent-shaped, and riveted into two sockets fixed at a right angle with the spout. The lid is a high cone surmounted by a small vase-shaped finial, and is hinged to the upper socket of the handle. On no part of the pot is there any ornamentation other than the royal cipher of King William III and Queen Mary, which is engraved on the reverse side of the body. This example, which measures nine inches in height to the top of its cover, resembles very closely in form the East India Company's tea-pot just referred to; but as teapots with much lower bodies appear to have come into fashion before 1689, this pot was probably used as a coffee pot from the first.

The 1692 coffee pot of lantern shape is the property of H.D. Ellis, and has its spout curved upward at the top, being furnished with a small, hinged flap and a scroll-shaped thumb-piece attached to the rim of the cover. The body and cover were originally quite plain, the embossing and chasing with symmetrical rococo decoration being added later, probably about 1740. Jackson says the wooden handle is not the original one, which was probably C-shaped. The pot bears the usual London hall-marks for the year 1692 and the maker's mark is "G G" upon a shaped shield, a mark recorded upon the copper plate belonging to the Goldsmiths' company, which Mr. Cripps thinks was that of George Garthorne. The characteristics of this lantern shaped coffee pot are:

1. The straight sides, so rapidly tapering from the base upward that in a height of only six inches the base diameter of four and three-eighths inches tapers to a diameter of no more than two and one-half inches at the rim.

2. The nearly straight spout, furnished with a flap or shutter.

3. The true cone of the lid.

4. The thumb-piece, which is a familiar feature upon the tankards of the period.

5. The handle fixed at right angles to the spout.

Mr. Ellis, in a paper before the Society of Antiquaries on the earliest form of coffee pot, says:

If coffee was first introduced into this country by the Turkey merchants, nothing is more probable than that those who first brought the berry, brought also the vessel in which it was to be served. Such a vessel would be the Turkish ewer whose shape is familiar to us, the same today as two hundred years ago, for in the East things are slow to change. And throughout the reign of the second Charles, so long as the extended use of coffee in the houses of the people was retarded by the opposition of the Women of England, and by the scarcely less powerful influence of the King's Court, the small requirements of a mere handful of coffee-houses would be easily met by the importation of Turkish vessels. Reference to the coffee-house keepers' tokens in the Beaufoy collection in the Guildhall Museum shows that many of the traders of 1660–1675 adopted as their trade sign a hand pouring coffee from a pot. This pot is invariably of the Turkish ewer pattern. It is true that there is nothing to show that the Turks themselves ever served coffee from the ewer, but it is scarcely conceivable that the English coffee-house keepers should have adopted as their trade sign, their pictorial advertisement, so to speak, a vessel which had no connection with the commodity in which they dealt, and which would convey no meaning associated with coffee to the public. But as soon as the extended use of the beverage created a demand which stimulated a home manufacture of coffee-pots, a new departure is apparent. The undulating outlines beloved by the Orientals, bowed as their scimitars, curvilinear as their graceful flowing script, do not commend themselves to the more severe Western taste of the period which had then declared its preference for sweet simplicity in silversmiths' work, such as we see in the basons, cups, and especially the flat-topped tankards of that day. The beauty of the straight line had asserted its power, and fashion felt its sway. Such was the feeling that produced the coffee-pot of 1692, the straight lines of which continued in vogue until the middle of the following century, when a reaction in favour of bulbous bodies and serpentine spouts set in.

Wastell Pot, 1720–21

Some of the more notable of the coffee-house-keepers' tokens in the Guildhall Museum were photographed for this work. They are described and illustrated in chapter X.

There are illustrated other silver coffee pots in the Victoria and Albert Museum, by Folkingham (1715–16), and by Wastell (1720–21), the latter pot being octagonal.

There is illustrated also a design in tiles that were let into the wall of an ancient coffee house in Brick Lane, Spitalfields, known as the "Dish of Coffee Boy" in the catalog of the collection of London antiquities in the Guildhall Museum. Mr. Ellis thinks this belongs to a period a little earlier, but certainly not later, than 1692; the coffee pot represented being exactly of the lantern shape. It is an oblong sign of glazed Delft tiles, decorated in blue, brown, and yellow, representing a youth pouring coffee. Upon a table, by his side, are a gazette, two pipes, a bowl, a bottle, and a mug; above, on a scroll, is, "dish of coffee boy."

"Dish of Coffee Boy" Design in Delft Tiles 1692

Modifications of the lantern began to appear with great rapidity in England. In the coffee pot of Chinese porcelain, illustrated, probably made in China from an English model a few years later than the 1692 pot, Mr. Ellis observes that "the spout has already lost its straightness, the extreme taper of the body is diminished, and the lid betrays the first tendency to depart from the straightness of the cone to the curved outline of the dome." He adds:

These variations rapidly intensified, and at the commencement of the eighteenth century we find the body still less tapering and the lid has become a perfect dome. As we approach the end of Queen Anne's reign the thumb piece disappears and the handle is no longer set on at right angles to the spout. Through the reign of George I but little modification took place, save that the taper of the body became less and less. In the Second George's time we find the taper has almost entirely disappeared, so that the sides are nearly parallel, while the dome of the lid has been flattened down to a very low elevation above the rim. In the second quarter of the eighteenth century the pear shaped coffee pot was the vogue. In the earlier years of George III, when many new and beautiful designs in silversmiths' work were created, a complete revolution in coffee-pots takes place, and the flowing outlines of the new pattern recall the form of the Turkish ewer, which had been discarded nearly one hundred years previously.

Chinese Porcelain Coffee Pot
Late seventeenth century

The evolution is shown by illustrations of Lord Swaythling's pot of 1731; the coffee jug of 1736; the Vincent pot of 1738; the Viscountess Wolseley's coffee pot of copper plated with silver; the Irish coffee pot of 1760; and the silver coffee pots of 1773–76 and of 1779–80