Bronze Age Gold from Wales

Coffee pot and cover, hard-paste porcelain, elongated pear-shaped coffee pot of jug form, folded spout, double C-scroll handle with upturning thumb piece, domed cover with acorn finilal and modelleled leaf; decorated in polychrome emanels, on one side with a vulture in blue, red, yellow, blue and purple, flanked by two other exotic birds similarly coloured, all perched in a U shaped branch issuing from rocks, two lines of gilding at the lip, handle and spout lightly gilded; cover circled with wreaths of foliage in green, acorn finial and moulded leaf similarly painted, rim and finial gilded.

This coffee pot was made at the factory established in 1771 at Oude Loosdrecht in the Netherlands by Pastor Joannes de Mol as a work-creation scheme for the local inhabitants. Unfortunately we do not know which artist was responsible for the wonderfully lively painting of a vulture and other birds. It may have been the Frenchman Louis-Victor Gerverot (1747-1829), a much-travelled porcelain painter who worked in France and Germany during his career, and worked at the Dutch factory of Weesp in 1768-1769 and at Loosdrecht from 1775 to 1779,