Enamelled decoration on Böttger period stoneware is extremely rare.  Very few pieces were made because the Elector King Augustus ‘the Strong’¹regarded enamelled decoration as too expensive. Augustus intervened in October 1710 when he wrote to the manufactory to tell them to stop using enamelling as a form of decoration, reminding them how expensive it was:  ‘…bey welchen wegen der daran befindlichen emailirten Arbeit zu erinnern, daβ, weil dieselbe kostbarer als die Geschirrchen selber, so wäre besser, wenn ins künfftige dergleichen Verzierungen in die Höhe oder in die Tieffe hineingeschliffen würden’ (…in this connection [I wish to] remind you on account of the enamelling on them that it would be better in future to cut décors in low or raised relief because the enamelling is more valuable than the crockery itself).² Three enamellers who had been listed among the workers at Meissen in August 1710 were no longer listed two years later,³so in all probability, the present coffee-pot was decorated in 1710, the first year of the manufactory’s output, and it is also very possible that it was offered for sale at the Leipzig Easter Fair of 1710.⁴

It is not certain which of the three Emeillirer decorated the present coffee-pot, although comparison with a coffee-pot in Gotha which is signed by one of these enamellers, Johann Martin Meyer, suggests that the present pot is also Meyer’s work.⁵ Meyer appears at the head of the Emeillirern (enamellers) on the list of factory workers which was taken on 5th August, and his weekly pay was 4 thalers (a stoneware coffee-pot of this form cost between 1 thaler 6 groschen and 10 thalers, depending on how it was decorated).⁶The Gotha coffee-pot is illustrated in a different publication by Ingelore Menzhausen along with another enamelled coffee-pot from the State Porcelain Collection in Dresden,⁷and it is interesting to note that these coffee-pots are both painted with flies, insects and birds. The running hound, snake and scorpion on the present lot may perhaps be unique.  A mounted enamelled coffee-pot of the same form (without garnets) was sold from the Princes Reuß collection by Christie’s Germany at Gera on 26-27th May 1998, lot 140. The Reuß coffee-pot was painted with a ladybird, butterfly and an insect, and the underside was impressed with a Ruyi lappet mark.

The form was designed by the Dresden Court Silversmith Johann Jakob Irminger (1635?-1724) who was asked by the King in 1710 (and subsequently formally instructed in 1712) to contribute designs for Böttger’s new stoneware. Böttger needed high-quality and contemporary designs, and turning to the Court Silversmith, who was au fait with the latest designs from Augsburg and beyond, was the natural choice. Irminger submitted his designs to Meissen in copper or silver, rarely visiting the factory.⁸He created this model of coffee-pot by fusing contemporary Baroque silver models with decoration derived from Chinese originals (the sea-monster’s head is derived from fish’s heads found on Chinese pieces). It has also been suggested that the form of Japanese sake-bottles may have influenced Irminger’s design, as well as being similar to coffee-pots made by Huguenot goldsmiths in England.⁹


1.  Augustus II (1670-1733), King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, who owned the Meissen manufactory.
2.  Augustus wrote on 25th October 1710 after receiving enamelled pieces while he was in Gdansk.  SächsHStA Dresden Loc. 1340, Conv. 1, fol. 64, cited by Ulrich Pietsch, ‘”Of red or brown porcelain” – decoration and refinement of Böttger stoneware’ in Böttger Stoneware, Johann Friedrich Böttger and Treasury Art, Altenburg, 2009, p. 48.
3.  Ulrich Pietsch, ibid., p. 48; the enamellers were Johann Martin Meyer, Elias Wolff and Wolff’s son. Meyer is also recorded as having worked on glass, see Dwight P. Lanmon, ‘A Royal Saxon Goblet’ in The Burlington Magazine, May 1987, pp. 313-315.
4.  This model of stoneware coffee-pot with jewelled and enamelled decoration is recorded as being offered for sale at the 1710 Easter Fair at Leipzig; see Ingelore Menzhausen, Alt-Meissner Porzellan in Dresden, Berlin, 1988, p. 194, no. 2.
5. This coffee-pot is now in the Schlossmuseum, Gotha (Inv.-No. St 349), and the signature is an enamelled monogram on the underside.  It is illustrated by Ulrich Pietsch, ibid., p. 47, ill. 16, and for an illustration of the monogram on the underside see Ingelore Menzhausen, ‘Das Älteste aus Meißen: Böttgersteinzeug und Böttgerporzellan’ in Johann Friedrich Böttger zum 300. Geburststag, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden February – August 1982 Exhibition Catalogue, Dresden, 1982, fig. 1/16 (underside) and fig. 1/15 (coffee-pot).  At the time of publication in 1982 the pot was in the Porzellansammlung, Dresden (formerly Inv. Nr. P.E. 893).
6.  Cf. Barbara Szelegejd, Red and Black Stoneware and their Imitations in the Wilanów Collection, Warsaw, 2013, p. 177.
7. Ingelore Menzhausen, ‘Das Rothe und das Weisse Porcellain’ in Johann Friedrich Böttger, Die Erfindung Des Europäischen Porzellans, Leipzig, 1982, figs. 115 and figs. 113 and 114.
8. Ulrike Weinhold, ‘”of unusual design” – Johann Jakob Irminger as the designer of Böttger stoneware’ in Dirk Syndram and Ulrike Weinhold (Ed.), Böttger Stoneware, Johann Friedrich Böttger and Treasury Art, 2009, p. 105. Irminger received a monthly salary of 20 thalers, irrespective of the individual pieces or groups of works that he worked on. Johann Melchior Steinbrück (an inspector at Meissen who had been Böttger’s secretary since 1709) did not share his master’s high regard for Irminger, frequently complaining that the silversmith barely visited the factory. After Böttger’s death in 1719, it wasn’t long before Irminger’s name was deleted from the salary list.
9. By Ulrike Weinhold, curator of the Grünes Gewölbe, Dresden, cited by Maria Santangelo, A Princely Pursuit, The Malcolm D. Gutter Collection of Early Meissen Porcelain, San Francisco, 2018, p. 41 and note 27.