CIRCA 1770

A boar's head of this model from the collection of Mrs. Lammot du Pont Copeland is in the Peabody Essex Museum and illustrated by W.R. Sargent, The Copeland Collection, p. 202, where the author notes that the records of the Dutch East India Company document an order of 25 boar's head tureens in the 1763 season. In 1764 nineteen were shipped home to Holland but a further order was not fulfilled because "the supercargoes considered them too risky." Fennimore and Halfpenny (The Campbell Collection of Soup Tureens at Winterthur, p.148) show a Chelsea example, quoting a Chelsea factory auction catalogue of March 18, 1755 listing "a very curious TUREEN in the form of a BOAR'S HEAD". Whether Chinese porcelain or European pottery, boar's head tureens must have made an impressive effect on the dining table, especially when filled with hot stew emitting clouds of steam through the snout.