Coffeepot

ca. 1735-40

German, 1700-1779

The scenes painted on these services depict bustling harbor activities, such as docks loaded with barrels and bales of cloth, which were associated with trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. European merchants and townspeople interact with exotic Middle Eastern– and Asian-style figures dressed in silk robes and wondrous plumed turbans or Chinese-style hats, to represent the distant countries in which the beverages originated. Harbor or port scenes, popular on coffee and tea porcelain wares produced at Meissen in the 1720s and 1730s, derive from contemporary engravings that had their origins in landscape and marine painting of the seventeenth century.

Hard paste porcelain

7 x 4 5/8 x 4 1/8 in. (17.78 x 11.75 x 10.48 cm)

Overall h.: 8 1/2 in.

Gift of Mr. & Mrs. Kenneth R. Fisher

64.69

Provenance: Donated to Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington by Mrs. Kenneth Fisher, April 18, 1964

Now on view at the Seattle Art Museum

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