The coffee pot is made in a type of red stoneware inspired by Chinese Yixing pottery, which was much admired in seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe. This red stoneware was made at the Meissen factory from its foundation in 1710 until about 1713, when commercial manufacture of white porcelain was achieved and production of stoneware was run down or discontinued. Both materials were developed by the alchemist Johann Friedrich Böttger. ‘Böttger stoneware’ was described in factory documents as ‘red porcelain’ or ‘Jasper porcelain’. Vessels like this were made in plaster moulds, often with integrally formed relief decoration, as here. Many of the shapes derive from European metalwork, and the design of these has traditionally been attributed to the Dresden court goldsmith Johann Jakob Irminger (1635–1724), who is known to have made design models in hammered copper for the factory. This coffee pot, however, has much in common with English and French silver, and may combine elements from French silver prototypes, now lost, with a spout and scrolled strut derived from Yixing stoneware and Chinese porcelain respectively. Research on inventories of collections of Meissen’s earliest products suggests that even apparently functional objects, such as tea and coffee wares like this coffee pot, were intended solely for display.