A FINE SILVER AND MIXED-METAL COFFEE POT

細節

A FINE SILVER AND MIXED-METAL COFFEE POT
MAKER'S MARK OF TIFFANY & CO., NEW YORK, CIRCA 1878

In the Japanese taste; of elongated gourd form, the spot-hammered surface applied with elaborately entwined foliate vines supporting copper mokume gourds, the handle applied with a beetle, the hinged domed cover with similar foliate vines and applied with a mokume butterfly, surmounted by a copper gourd stem issuing from a calyx of silver leaves, marked, also with French control mark--10 7/8in. high
(gross weight 32 oz.)

拍品專文

This coffeepot was made to one of Edward C. Moore's designs for the Paris Exposition of 1878. Moore's mixed-metal objects in the Japanese taste won much praise from the French critics at the fair, and the design for this coffeepot was illustrated in a contemporary review of Tiffany's exhibit (Emile Bergerat, "Tiffany," Art Contemporain, 1878, p. 123). The presence of a French import control mark on this coffee pot suggests that this coffee pot was the one sent to the Paris Exposition or was retailed in Tiffany's Paris store shortly thereafter.

A nearly identical coffee pot is in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery, illustrated in Alice C. Frelinghuysen, et al., In Pursuit of Beauty: Americans and the Aesthetic Movement, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986, fig. 8.10, p. 263.

Another similar gourd-form coffeepot is illustrated on the cover of Charles H. Carpenter, Jr., Tiffany Silver, New York, 1978.