Although Coffee is known in England from the late 16th century it was rare until the mid to third quarter of the seventeenth century. The first coffee house in England was opened in Cornhill, London in 1652 by a Greek named Pasqua Rosee’. While a servant for a British Levant merchant in Smyrna, Turkey, he developed a taste for the exotic drink and decided to import it to London.
By the later 17th century there were many hundreds in London. The earliest silver coffee pots were being fashioned in the very late seventeenth century and are only really made in any quantity during the Queen Anne period (1701-1713). The earliest coffee pots are often made with their handles at right angles to their spouts and either straight sided or in a baluster shape. They are almost always plain in style (if decorated be careful!)
In the later Queen Anne period octagonal shapes appear and certainly by 1725 most coffee pots have their handles opposite the spout. By the late 1730s to the early 1770s rococo decorated coffee pots appear alongside plainer examples (when purchasing rococo examples make sure the decoration is original not added later).
Until the late 1770s coffee pots tend to be made on an individual basis, as tea and coffee sets were practically unknown and at that date the neo-classical vase shape became preeminent. By the early nineteenth century, the styles became more varied, and a vast array of shapes were made.
At William Walter Antiques we have a fine selection of coffee pots from the early Georgian period right up to more modern times.
