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Lot Essay
Monteiths were used for chilling wine glasses, which were suspended into cold water from the rim. The monteith, named after an eccentric Scot, Lord Monteith, who wore a cloak with notched hem, is first mentioned in English records in 1683, with silver examples being made the following year. It is this early form of monteith, with even rim and plain U-shaped notiches which was copied in Chinese porcelain from circa 1715, when, rather than copying metalwork prototypes which by that time had changed in style, they copied European ceramic versions, probably Dutch Delft examples of circa 1710.
See C. Le Corbeiller, China Trade Porcelain: Patterns of Exchange, 1974, pp.36-37 for a discussion on monteiths, where the author illustrates the Helena Woolworth McCann blue and white monteith in the Metropolitan Museum of Art as no.15. An almost identical monteith to that in the Metropolitan can be found in the Hodroff Collection, illustrated by David S. Howard, The Choice of the Private Trader, 1994, no.218, p.190; and another, very similar, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum illustrated in Chinese Export Art and Design, editor Craig Clunas, 1987, no.39.
See C. Le Corbeiller, China Trade Porcelain: Patterns of Exchange, 1974, pp.36-37 for a discussion on monteiths, where the author illustrates the Helena Woolworth McCann blue and white monteith in the Metropolitan Museum of Art as no.15. An almost identical monteith to that in the Metropolitan can be found in the Hodroff Collection, illustrated by David S. Howard, The Choice of the Private Trader, 1994, no.218, p.190; and another, very similar, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum illustrated in Chinese Export Art and Design, editor Craig Clunas, 1987, no.39.