Coffeepot
ca. 1770
By the time this coffeepot was painted, chinoiserie decoration was no longer in vogue on the Continent. Early English chinoiseries were often inspired by Meissen, the French factories, or by engravings after French artists. This coffeepot depicts chinoiserie as presented by an English artist. F. Severne Mackenna, one of this century's great collectors of European porcelain and the former owner of this rare coffeepot, wrote about its decoration: "It is a curious mixture of Oriental and European. The grouping and accessories are intended to suggest an Oriental scene, but the faces are strikingly European."
As a favored design on the swirling rococo forms of mid century, asymmetrical chinoiserie scenes often followed the shape of the ware and were painted in reserve on smooth surfaces. This scene is depicted on the more rigid, broadly molded fluting of the later neoclassical style, a surface not particularly suited to a painted scene. This coffeepot was produced at the first hard-paste porcelain manufactory in England, which was established at Plymouth in 1768.
Hard paste porcelain
11 1/2 x 7 3/8 in. (29.2 x 18.73 cm)
Gift of Martha and Henry Isaacson
76.203
Provenance: Formerly in the collection of Mr F. Severne MacKenna, England; collection of Mr and Mrs Henry and Martha Isaacson, unknown purchase date until 1976; gift from Mr and Mrs Henry and Martha Isaacson to Seattle Art Museum, Washington, 1976
