Teapot

With the importation into Europe of tea from the Far East, coffee from the near East, and chocolate from the Americas, special vessels for the brewing and serving of these new beverages were required. At first all three of these beverages were regarded as medicinal which limited their popularity and only gradually did these drinks gain acceptance in the home. Tea drinking was introduced in France toward the end of the seventeenth century. By 1687 silver pots for the serving of tea are listed in the inventory of Louis XIV’s plate. Very few such early French teapots are known to survive other than one marked by the silversmith as common in France as compared to Great Britain, for instance.



This teapot, made by Antoine Dutemple in Bordeaux in 1775–77, displays slightly S-shaped fluting which was fashionable in the Rococo period but the restrained manner of execution belongs more to the neo-classical period. The pot’s overall form, however, is based on porcelain teapots made in China, most likely for the European market. (For examples in The Met collection see 1977.216.47a, b and 51.86.300a, b.)



Daughter of one of the founders of the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, Catherine D. Wentworth (1865–1948) was an art student and painter who lived in France for thirty years. She became one of the most important American collectors of eighteenth-century French silver and on her death in 1948 bequeathed part of her significant collection of silver, gold boxes, French furniture, and textiles to the Metropolitan Museum. The collection is particularly strong in domestic silver as illustrated by this teapot.