Coffee Grinder Set with Jewels
In the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
A very beautiful specimen of the oriental coffee grinder, made of brass and teakwood, set with red and green glass jewels, and inlaid in the teakwood with ivory and brass, is at the Metropolitan. This is of Indo-Persian design of the nineteenth century.
The Metropolitan Museum shows also many specimens of pewter coffee pots used in India, Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, Russia, and England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
One can guess at the luxuriousness of the coffee pots in use in France throughout the eighteenth century by noting that from March 20, 1754, to April 16, 1755, Louis XV bought no fewer than three gold coffee pots of Lazare Duvaux. They had carved branches, and were supplied with "chafing dishes of burnished steel" and lamps for spirits of wine. They cost, respectively, 1,950, 1,536, and 2,400 francs. In the "inventory of Marie-Josephe de Saxe, Dauphine of France", we note, too, a "two cup coffee pot of gold with its chafing dish for spirits of wine in a leather case."
The Italian wrought-iron coffee roaster of the seventeenth century was often a work of art. The specimen illustrated is rich in decorative motifs associated with the best in Florentine art.
Madame de Pompadour's inventory disclosed a "gold coffee mill, carved in colored gold to represent the branches of a coffee tree." The art of gold, which sought to embellish everything, did not disdain these homely utensils; and one may see at the Cluny Museum in Paris, among many mills of graceful form, a coffee mill of engraved iron dating from the eighteenth century, upon which are represented the four seasons. We are told, however, that it graced the "sale after the death of Mme. de Pompadour", which, of course, makes it much more valuable.
