Pattern 522 Spode bone china Bute shape Coffee Can & Saucer produced by Josiah Spode II c1803. All hand-painted, this design includes the very fashionable yellow enamel and a variation of the blue, red & green 'French Sprig' floral pattern together with lovely gilt work and a puce & green meandering floral border. These items would have been fired at least 4 or 5 times in Spode's bottle ovens because of the range of colours used & their different firing temperature requirements.
All hand-painted and gilded, what a pretty sensational coffee can & saucer. No doubt the original owner of this coffee can & saucer considered themselves to have very sophisticated taste, it would have been the height of fashion in 1803 (but would have quickly dated & looked decidedly unfashionable once Britain was at war with France later that same year). Perhaps it was put away in a cupboard & that would explain why it has survived so long looking unused.
The Napoleonic Wars of 1803-1815 commenced and this would be one of the last French 'ordered nature' designs produced by Josiah Spode II. From this period onwards the British took to loving Chinese & Japanese decoration in a VERY BIG way.
Marked to the base of the Coffee Can with a worker's/gilder's mark only
Pam Woolliscroft writes a blog about Spode porcelain and owns a Teapot Stand in this same pattern, you can read about it here: https://spodehistory.blogspot.com/2017/01/spode-and-mystery-teapot-stand.html
Interestingly the paper records for Spode's patterns 518 to 522 are all missing from the Spode archives so Pam's Teapot Stand & this item above plus my pattern 518 coffee can & saucer provide a few more clues in piecing together the early Spode bone china historical jigsaw.
This Spode Coffee Can & Saucer came to me from an Antiques Dealer in Finland who had owned it for 19 years and previous to that it had been owned & in the personal collection of Gerald Sattin a well-known Antiques Dealer of London. Here are the details from Paul Keighley Antiques, Finland: http://www.keighleyantiques.com/englishporcelain
Well well, look what I have found (April 2019), if only I, Pam or the Spode Museum had known about it at the time, it's a real wow - I wonder where it is now?
Bonhams, The Autumn Athenaeum, 28th October 2009 at Bury St Edmunds, Lot 331 a 'Spode Polychrome Teapot early 19th century', see here: