Coffee Can and Saucer, ca. 1804

  • Vienna Porcelain Factory, Austrian

Hard-paste porcelain with polychrome decoration and gold

  • Overall (cup): 2 1/2 × 2 1/2 inches (6.4 × 6.4 cm) Overall (saucer): 1 1/8 × 5 3/8 inches (2.9 × 13.7 cm)

Founders Society Purchase with funds from the Visiting Committee for European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

1988.69.6

On View

  • Decorative Arts
  • Decorative Arts

Department

European Sculpture and Dec Arts

Under the direction of Konrad Sörgel von Sorgenthal from 1784 until 1805, the Imperial Porcelain Factory of Vienna developed a unique style of decoration based on a rich new palette of colors (such as the café au lait ground used here) and improved methods of gilding. The simplified cylindrical shapes provided ideal surfaces for painting the large landscape views popular since the 1770s. Porcelain decorators, now trained in art academies, rivaled the finest painters of late eighteenth-century Europe. Decorating this tea set are miniature views of Pavlovsk Palace and park, the summer residence near Saint Petersburg of the Russian imperial family.

(Armin B. Allen, Inc.)

1988-present, purchase by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)

You, Yao-Fen. “From Novelty to Necessity: The Europeanization of Coffee, Tea, and Chocolate.” In Coffee, Tea, and Chocolate: Consuming the World, ed. Yao-Fen You, Mimi Hellman, and Hope Saska. Exh. cat., Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit, 2016, p. 33; 50 (ill.); 134, cat. 46.

Vienna Porcelain Factory, Coffee Can and Saucer, ca. 1804, hard-paste porcelain with polychrome decoration and gold. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase with funds from the Visiting Committee for European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, 1988.69.6.