Early Dr Wall Worcester Ribbed Coffee Cup, Circa 1752

A very rare early Dr Wall Worcester Ribbed Coffee Cup, the elegantly ribbed form with lobed underside and flared rim, the scrolled handle with rising thumb piece and bifurcated lower terminal, painted in the famille rose palette with an extremely unusual and previously unrecorded vivid holed blue rock issuing with stylised flowering peonies and leaves.

This shape refers to the shape described in the London Warehouse price list as ‘ribb’d’ and selling for ‘8/- a dozen’. These cups had no saucers. The shape was used for blue and white patterns too but these examples are smaller in size than the coloured counterparts. The only other manufactory to produce coffee cups of this type was the Bow manufactory and these were more cumbersome and thicker in the extreme to these highly sophisticated Worcester examples which far excell even the Chinese exported examples and beautifully earn the sophistication afforded to their ingenious development of shape at Worcester. The vastly superior Worcester product would certainly have warranted a higher price which shows the different objectives with the mass market enterprise of Bow and Chinese export porcelain. The model absolutely unique to Worcester was produced from 1751-54, coloured examples are earlier than those decorated in blue.