Pattern 1956 Spode bone china Bute shape Coffee Can produced by Spode II c1813. This was another very popular Imari design with Spode's customers. The design looks like an Oriental landscape with several house rooftops & exotic foliage. The extra border pattern in iron-red enamel just inside the can top rim (Wedgwood used a similar one) makes it quite special. This would have given Georgian customers a glimpse into a very different country & culture, of which very little was known.
It is all hand-painted & gilded. There is a little dent to the rim which has been gilded over - competition between manufacturers was fierce and costs had to be kept down so slight faults were ignored & decorated over.
What a lovely little coffee can!
Even pretty clean inside
Just a speck of kiln dust on the base rim. Still no pattern number or decorator's marks on the base of this can but the main pieces of a tea/coffee service would have been marked with its pattern number.