German Coffee Pot

Meissen drew this pattern in 1740 and could not keep hold of it, and within a generation half the potteries in Europe were painting their own version of the straw flower. Found in Belgium, this coffee pot carries that pattern in cobalt blue on white, a tall tapered body with a scrolled handle and a small finial turned on the lid. Every factory that copied it changed something, a stem here, a spray there, so that no two makers' straw flowers ever quite matched, and you can tell one house from another by the details alone. Sylvie keeps it out with the coffee and a plate of biscuits, the blue and white doing what it has always done on a morning table.

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