Conical coffee pot on footring, wide mouthrim. High, conical lid with protruding rim and pointed knob. S-shaped spout and, placed at a right angle, a C-shaped handle. So-called Batavia Brown, covered with underglaze dark brown. Decorated in pink, white, turquoise and yellow enamel on the glaze with peony sprays and a small chrysanthemum spray in the two large, pendent leaf-shaped panels on the body. The same decoration in the two smaller panels on the lid.
Much coffee was consumed at home and in coffee houses in The Netherlands from the end of the 17th century. The beans came primarily from Yemen, and only later from Java. As tea, coffee also required its own utensils, the coffee pot naturally being the most important piece. The shape of this pot evokes late 17th-century copper and pewter pots. The right-angled handle is often seen on this type, but is more rare on bulbous coffee pots, see, for example, cat. 94. It is interesting that the VOC gave orders in 1766 that the handles of conical pots be placed opposite the spout (Jörg). For comments on Batavia Brown, see cat. 82.

Coffee pot on footring, pear-shaped body, wide mouthrim, domed lid with flat rim, a peach as a knob. Wide triangular spout, half-closed at the top, the bottom part modelled as a shell, the sides with foliate motifs. On the opposite side a C-shaped ear with a right-angled, protruding upper part. Decorated in various enamel colours with on either side a rococo panel with two Chinese women in a courtyard near the entrance to a house. A bespectacled man sitting with a child reading a scroll on a rock near a tree. On the lid four panels with flower sprays and garden landscapes.
This type of coffee pot is redolent of German porcelain examples from the period 1730–1750, which are typified by the pear-shaped body and modelled spout. They are referred to in the VOC archives as ‘Saksisch (Saxon) model’. The decoration is characteristic of the group called ‘mandarijn’ (mandarin) in The Netherlands, a generic term used in the West to refer to all Chinese officials. Purple, orange, yellow, a hard pink and brown enamels were often added and decorations consisted mainly of Chinese figures and family scenes. In Groningen, ‘herenmandarijn’ (gentlemens’ mandarin), the variation with gold, as here, was regarded as suitable for the upper classes, while ‘boerenmandarijn ‘ (farmers’ mandarin), without gold, was for the middle and lower classes. The bespectacled man is interesting: spectacles were a popular Western import and were pre-ground to strength according to age. There were spectacles for 40-year-olds, a different strength for those of 50, and so on. Naturally, it did not take long for the Chinese to start making imitations of European spectacles.