This brilliant and original design was conceived by the great Liegoise silversmith and founder of the Chelsea factory, Nicholas Sprimont. The debt to repoussé silver is evident in the carefully raised teaplant stems that spiral around the lobed body and, as Sally Kevill-Davies has pointed out, echoes the design on a pair of marked silver tea cannisters and a matching sugar box in the MFA Boston .[i] The design of the teaplant perhaps ultimately derives from an engraving by Wenceslaus Hollar published in Johannes Nieuhof’s ‘An Embassy from the East-India Company of the United Provinces, to the Grand Tartar Cham Emperor of China’ (London: 1669, Kircher p.87), (see British Museum no. 1855,0512.300). The name teaplant is a modern invention.
Two silver cannisters and a sugar vase by Nicholas Sprimont,
Jessie and Sigmund Katz Collection, Museum of Fine Arts Boston (1988.1075a-1077a-b)
This coffee pot exists in two main variants, ours has the more elaborate and carefully worked handle. This design also exists in sugar bowls, beakers and yet only one saucer is known.
Frank Tilley (Tilley 1957, p. 96, Pl. LIV, No. 162 (3)) notes that part of a glazed and enamelled coffee pot of this pattern was found in the first excavations on the Chelsea site in 1847 and illustrates a unglazed ‘biscuit’ lid with the teaplant pattern which was found in three kilns discovered during excavations in 1906.
This pot was discovered at Blair Atholl in a pantry during a routine valuation by Anton Gabszewicz and had presumably been in the collections of the Dukes of Argyll since the 18th century.
Condition:
Stress cracks to cover visible in the interior, minute rim chip to rim of cover, minor 1.0 cm hairline crack to rim of coffee pot. The apparent chip on the tip of the cover is glazed over and so occurred before firing. Some speckling to areas of glaze.
It has sagged slightly in the firing and leans to one side.
Provenance:
The Dukes of Argyll, Blair Atholl Castle
The Property of the Blair Charitable Trust, removed from Blair Castle, Blair Atholl, Scotland, Christie’s London, 3 June 2015, lot 78 (£80,500.00)
The Stanley F. Goldfein Collection
References:
Tilley 1957
Tilley, Frank. Teapots and Tea, (The Ceramic Book Company, Newport 1957)
Austin 1977
John C. Austin, Chelsea Porcelain at Williamsburg, Williamsburg (1977), for the example formerly in the M.G. Kaufman Collection, Chicago
Kevill-Davies 2020
Sally Kevill-Davies, ‘Some New Connections between Nicholas Sprimont’s Silver and early Chelsea porcelain’, Transactions of the English Ceramic Circle, Vol. 31 (2020), pp. 105-127
For other recently published examples see:
Gallagher 2015
Brian D Gallagher (et. al.), British Ceramics 1675-1825, The Mint Museum (2015) pp. 176-177, no. 113
Sharp 2015
Rosalie Wise Sharp, China to Light Up a House, Volume 1, (2015) p. 72, no. 219
[i] Jessie and Sigmund Katz collection, 1988.1076a-b.
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