D2314. Blue and White Monteith

Attributed to Lambertus van Eenhoorn, the owner of De Metaale Pot (The Metal Pot) factory from 1691 to 1721

Painted around the exterior with floral and foliate sprigs and sprays interspersed with small clusters of dots between floral-patterned blue-ground lappet borders between the eight notches around the rim, and the interior with similar floral and foliate sprigs and spray decoration in a roundel edged by a scroll border below eight floral scrollwork motifs between the notches.

DIMENSIONS
Height: 19.6 cm. (7.7 in.); Diameter: 35.3 cm. (13.9 in.)

NOTE
Wine glass coolers are often considered a late seventeenth-century French invention, circa 1680, initially created in silver to accompany the wine fountain or cistern and the wine bottle cooler in the increasingly grand displays of plate or silver furniture of kings, princes and ambassadors. However, the form appears simultaneously in English silver, and according to H. Coutts, The Art of Ceramics, European Ceramic Design 1500-1830 (New Haven and London, 2001), pp. 80-81, in England, where the newness of the coolers was mentioned in 1683, they were named ‘monteiths’ after a Scottish nobleman who was known to wear a cloak with a serrated hem. The earliest silver wine glass coolers were round or oval, often with lion’s-paw feet and handles formed as lion’s heads holding rings in their mouths. The cooler was filled with ice or cold water, and the glasses were suspended upside down with their bowls in the cooler and their feet supported by the scalloped rim. If large enough, the cooler could also be used to chill wine bottles in the ice (see Kievit and Klüver 2015, pp. 94-95). At the time, the larger houses and castles had ice-cellars dug deep into the ground, in which temperatures stayed low, and ice, harvested from ponds during the winter and packed in straw, could be stored during the warm summer months.

By the late seventeenth century, the French court of Louis XIV (1638-1715) was the model of splendor and taste for all of Europe. While his display of wealth in silver was the envy of every court, it was not invulnerable. France’s involvement in expensive wars forced the king to order all available silver to be melted down (including the silver furniture

at Versailles), first in 1689, and again in 1708, to replenish the country’s coffers. In the process, the king replaced his silver service with a Chinese porcelain blue and white service. As a result, the French faience industry increased the production of both ornamental and functional pieces, worthy of royal and aristocratic tables. In their sudden need for such silver substitutes, the marchands merciers had to reach beyond the local factories to potters in other parts of Europe, and particularly in the nearby Netherlands. It was for this reason, among others, that at this time many pieces of earthenware, particularly Dutch Delftware, were created of the highest quality, following the shapes of the original silver objects: dishes, candlesticks, salt cellars and sugar casters. The potters also fearlessly undertook the larger and more impressive objects: fountains or cisterns, wine coolers, flasks and bottles, all forms of vases and flower containers, and even centerpieces. The popularity of refined faience on the dinner tables of the European courts and noble houses increased the prestige of Delftware, and the pieces created at the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century came to rival and sometimes even surpass their silver counterparts.