The Burghley Teapot
Category
Ceramics
Date
1660 - 1688
Materials
porcelain, iron-oxide glaze, white engobe; gilded silver
Measurements
218 x 192 x 135 mm
Order this imageCollection
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire
NT 513426
Summary
‘The Burghley Teapot’, adapted from a Jingdezhen porcelain jar, covered in a brown glaze with white engobe, Jianxi province, China, v. 1600–40; mounted in silver-gilt, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, c.1660–88.
Full description
By 1658, the new hot beverage ‘tcha’ or tea was available in London Coffee houses, tapped from kegs, reheated on demand and served from tall, silver pots. Knowledge of its correct preparation was limited to those with access to costly treatises, such as Simon Paulli’s ‘Commentarius de abusu tabaci … et herbae thee Asiaticorum in Europa novo’, published in Strasbourg in 1665. Paulli illustrated a teapot in the Swedish royal collection, acquired in 1656, which had a cold-tipped spout and a chain securing the lid. Small teapots of red stoneware, made at Yixing in Jiangsu province, a famous tea-growing region, were the preference of China’s tea connoisseurs. Until the late 1670s, when they became ubiquitous, they were a scarce commodity in England. Fuelled by demand for these rare stoneware teapots, a Dutch goldsmith fabricated a clever solution: he created a teapot by adding mounts to a Chinese porcelain gourd-shaped jar and cover made in about 1600-40. Now at Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire, the teapot is first recorded ina 1688 inventory of Burghley House, Lincolnshire, prepared by Culpepper Tanner (d. 1726) for the well-travelled collector John Cecil, 5th earl of Exeter (C.1648-1700); ‘1 Brown and white relev’d Tea pott with Guilt handle, Spout Top & bottome & a little figure & Chaines on the Topp of itt’. The lustrous brown glaze, coloured by iron oxide, is coarsely painted with chrysanthemums in white engobe (liquid porcelain). This rare technique, which was applied to Kraak-type export wares, is also found on a pair of pomegranate-shaped porcelain ewers of around 1600–25 at Charlecote, Warwickshire. Formerly owned by the great collector William Beckford (1760–1844), they were mounted in Europe with silver-gilt collars and chains with stoppers in about 1650 (see NT 532432). Between 1675 and 1725 Dutch goldsmiths specialised in mounting Asian teapots with cast figural or animal finials and adding chains with spout plus or hinged spout covers., In china, some early Yixing teapots had a pierced handle for attaching chains or silk cords to secure the cover, and this may have inspired the European mounts. Those on this teapot are among the earliest. Serrated, hinged straps secure the chased and engraved spout and handle (which as a thumbpiece cast with a male bust) to collars on the neck and foot. The cover has a finial with an amorino holding a quiver and now, secured by a threaded pin and shaped fastener. Similar finials on Yixing teapots appear in paintings attributed to the Dutch painter Pieter Gerritsz. Van Roestraten, based in London from 1666. The teapot was sold from Burghley in 1888 by William Alleyne Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Exeter, for £73 10s od. It was then in the Revelstoke, Swaythling and Paget collections, and was finally acquired in 1953 by the American-born heir to oil and mining fortunes, Urban Huttleston Rogers Broughton, 1st Baron Fairhaven (1896–§966), of Mayfair and Anglesey Abbey, also a silver collector, who appreciated its historic importance and ingenuity. Text adapted from Patricia F. Ferguson, Ceramics: 400 Years of British Collecting in 100 Masterpieces, Philip Wilson Publishers, 2016.
Provenance
Bequeathed to the National Trust by Huttleston Rogers Broughton, 1st Lord Fairhaven (1896-1966) with the house and the rest of the contents.
Credit line
The Fairhaven Collection, Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire, National Trust Collections
References
Ferguson 2016: Patricia F. Ferguson, Ceramics: 400 Years of British Collecting in 100 Masterpieces, Philip Wilson Publishers, 2016, 24-5
