A rare Böttger polished stoneware silver-mounted coffee pot and cover circa 1715

modelled by Johann Jakob Irminger, the quadrangular pear-shaped body decorated on the front and reverse with a faint prunus design, set with a loop handle cut with facets and a square section spout issuing from a finely modelled serpent's mouth and joined to the body with an S-scoll bracket, set with silver acanthus mounts at the foot and on the rim of cover, and fitted around the foot and the cover with hinged silver bands set with white and amethyst-colored paste stones, a similar mount beneath the rim suspending paired foliate motifs on three sides, the end of the spout futher mounted in silver gilt and paste stones and with a silver cover affixed by a chain, the cover also affixed to the handle with a similar chain. Chip and break to two corners of the foot under the mount, one paste stone detached.

Sold, Sotheby's, London, June 28, 1977, lot 210

A coffee pot of this form with relief-molded prunus decoration is illustrated by Waltraud Neuwirth, Böttgersteinzeug, Yixing und andere Rote Ware, front cover. The molded design matches exactly the prunus pattern on the present piece, which was presumably left as a color stain in the clay body when the relief molding was polished away.

The paste-set silver mounts appear to be contemporary to the pot. A very similar foliate motif is found on a jewelled ornament made by the Meissen goldsmith Johann Abraham Schneider in 1694, now in the Dresden Historisches Museum and illustrated by Erna von Watzdorf, Johann Melchior Dinglinger, p. 50, pl. 35, where the author notes, on p. 51, the ornaments parallels in design with the Rubin-Garniture, a suite of jewels by Dinglinger, the drawings for which are illustrated, ibid., p. 48, fig. 32. No other Böttger stonewares with such elaborate mounts appear to be recorded.

Coffee pots of this shape appear in plain stoneware, polished, black-glazed and enamelled and jewelled examples, and with much more simple silver mounts. An example of the latter was sold at Christie's, London, April 6, 1981, lot 115; and an enamelled and jewelled example was sold at Sotheby's, Zurich, June 1, 1994, lot 134.