The evolution is shown by illustrations of Lord Swaythling's pot of 1731; the coffee jug of 1736; the Vincent pot of 1738; the Viscountess Wolseley's coffee pot of copper plated with silver; the Irish coffee pot of 1760; and the silver coffee pots of 1773–76 and of 1779–80 (see illustrations on pages 604, 605 and 607).

There are illustrated in this connection specimens of coffee pots in stoneware by Elers (1700), and in salt glaze by Astbury, and another of the period about 1725. These are in the department of British and medieval antiquities of the British Museum, where are to be seen also some beautiful specimens of coffee-service pots in Whieldon ware, and in Wedgwood's jasper ware.

Illustrated, too, are some beautiful examples of the art of the potter, applied to coffee service, as found in the Metropolitan Museum, where they have been brought from many countries. Included are Leeds and Staffordshire examples of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries; a Sino-Lowestoft pot of the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries; an Italian (capodimonte) pot of the eighteenth century; German pots of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; a Vienna coffee pot of the eighteenth century; a French (La Seine) coffee pot of 1774–1793, a Sèvres pot of 1792–1804; and a Spanish eighteenth-century coffee pot decorated in copper luster.

At the Metropolitan may be seen also Hatfield and Sheffield-plate pots of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and many examples of silver tea and coffee service and coffee pots by American silversmiths.

Silver tea pots and coffee pots were few in America before the middle of the eighteenth century. Early coffee-pot examples were tapering and cylindrical in form, and later matched the tea pots with swelling drums, molded bases, decorated spouts, and molded lids with finials.

From notes by R.T. Haines Halsey and John H. Buck, collected by Florence N. Levy and woven into an introduction to the Metropolitan Museum's art exhibition catalog for the Hudson-Fulton celebration of 1909, we learn that:

In the New York colony there were evolved silver tea pots of a unique design, that was not used elsewhere in the colonies. Mr. Halsey says they were used indiscriminately for both tea and coffee. In style they followed, to a certain extent, the squat pear-shaped tea pots of the period of 1717–18 in England, but had greater height and capacity.

The colonial silversmiths wrought many beautiful designs in coffee, tea, and chocolate pots. Fine specimens are to be seen in the Halsey and Clearwater loan collections in the Metropolitan Museum. Included in the Clearwater collection is a coffee pot by Pygan Adams (1712–1776); and recently, there was added a coffee pot by Ephraim Brasher, whose name appears in the New York City Directory from 1786 to 1805. He was a member of the Gold and Silversmiths' Society, and he made the die for the famous gold doubloon, known by his name, a specimen of which recently sold in Philadelphia for $4,000. His brother, Abraham Brasher, who was an officer in the continental army, wrote many popular ballads of the Revolutionary period, and was a constant contributor to the newspapers.

Judge Clearwater's collection of colonial silver in the Metropolitan Museum, to which he is constantly adding, is a magnificent one; and the coffee pot is worthy of it. It is thirteen and one-half inches high, weighs forty-four ounces, exclusive of the ebony handle, has a curved body and splayed base, with a godrooned band to the base and a similar edge to the cover. The spout is elaborate and curved; the cover has an urn-shaped finial; and there is a decoration of an engraved medallion surrounded by a wreath with a ribbon forming a true lover's knot.

In the Halsey collection is shown a silver coffee pot by Samuel Minott, and several beautiful specimens of the handiwork of Paul Revere, whose name is more often connected with the famous "midnight ride" than with the art of the silversmith. Of all the American silversmiths, Paul Revere was the most interesting. Not only was he a silversmith of renown, but a patriot, soldier, grand master Mason, confidential agent of the state of Massachusetts Bay, engraver, picture-frame designer, and die-sinker. He was born in Boston in 1735, and died in 1818. He was the most famous of all the Boston silversmiths, although he is more widely known as a patriot. He was the third of a family of twelve children, and early entered his father's shop. When only nineteen, his father died; but he was able to carry on the business. The engraving on his silver bears witness to his ability. He engraved also on copper, and made many political cartoons. He joined the expedition against the French at Crown Point, and in the war of the Revolution was a lieutenant-colonel of artillery. After the close of the war, he resumed his business of a goldsmith and silversmith in 1783. Decidedly a man of action, he well played many parts; and in all his manifold undertakings achieved brilliant success. There clings, therefore, to the articles of silver made by him an element of romantic and patriotic association which endears them to those who possess them.

Revere had a real talent that enabled him to impart an unwonted elegance to his work, and he was famous as an engraver of the beautiful crests, armorial designs, and floral wreaths that adorn much of his work. His tea pots and coffee pots are unusually beautiful.

Revere coffee pots are to be seen in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts as well as in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has also a coffee pot made by William Shaw and William Priest in 1751–52 for Peter Faneuil, the wealthiest Bostonian of his time, who gave to Boston Faneuil Hall, New England's cradle of American liberty.

Among other American silversmiths who produced striking designs in coffee pots, mention should be made of G. Aiken (1815); Garrett Eoff (New York, 1785–1850); Charles Faris (who worked in Boston about 1790); Jacob Hurd (1702–1758, known in Boston as Captain Hurd); John McMullin (mentioned in the Philadelphia Directory for 1796); James Musgrave (mentioned in Philadelphia directories of 1797, 1808, and 1811); Myer Myers (admitted as freeman, New York, 1746; active until 1790; president of the New York Silversmiths Society, 1786); and Anthony Rasch (who is known to have worked in Philadelphia, 1815).

In the museums of the many historical societies throughout the United States are to be seen interesting specimens of coffee pots in pewter, Britannia metal, and tin ware, as well as in pottery, porcelain, and silver. Some of these are illustrated.

As in other branches of art during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the United States were indebted to England, Holland, and France for much of the early pottery and porcelain. Elers, Astbury, Whieldon, Wedgwood, their imitators, and the later Staffordshire potters, flooded the American market with their wares. Porcelain was not made in this country previous to the nineteenth century. Decorative pottery was made here, however, from an early period. Britannia ware began to take the place of pewter in 1825; and the introduction of japanned tin ware and pottery gradually caused the manufacture of pewter to be abandoned.

An interesting relic is in the collection of the Bostonian Society. It is a coffee urn of Sheffield ware, formerly in the Green Dragon tavern, which stood on Union Street from 1697 to 1832, and was a famous meeting place of the patriots of the Revolution. It is globular in form, and rests on a base; and inside is still to be seen the cylindrical piece of iron which, when heated, kept the delectable liquid contents of the urn hot until imbibed by the frequenters of the tavern. The iron bar was set in a zinc or tin jacket to keep such fireplace ashes as still clung to it from coming in contact with the coffee, which was probably brewed in a stew kettle before being poured into the urn for serving. The Green Dragon tavern site, now occupied by a business structure, is owned by the St. Andrew's Lodge of Freemasons of Boston; and at a recent gathering of the lodge on St. Andrew's Day, the urn was exhibited to the assembled brethren.

When the contents of the tavern were sold, the urn was bought by Mrs. Elizabeth Harrington, who then kept a famous boarding-house on Pearl Street, in a building owned by the Quincy family. The house was razed in 1847, and was replaced by the Quincy Block; and Mrs. Harrington removed to High Street, and from there to Chauncey Place. Some of the prominent men of Boston boarded with her for many years. At her death, the urn was given to her daughter, Mrs. John R. Bradford. It was presented to the society by Miss Phebe C. Bradford, of Boston, granddaughter of Mrs. Elizabeth Harrington.

A somewhat similar urn, made of pewter, is in the Museum of the Maine Historical Society of Portland, Me.; another in the Museum of the Essex Institute at Salem, Mass.

Among the many treasured relics of Abraham Lincoln is an old Britannia coffee pot from which he was regularly served while a boarder with the Rutledge family at the Rutledge inn in New Salem (now Menard), Ill. It was a valued utensil, and Lincoln is said to have been very fond of it. It is illustrated on page 690.

The pot is now the property of the Old Salem Lincoln League, of Petersburg, Ill., and was donated to it, with other relics, by Mrs. Saunders, of Sisquoc, Cal., the only surviving child of James and Mary Ann Rutledge. Mrs. Rutledge carefully preserved this and other relics of New Salem days; and shortly before her death in 1878, she gave them into the keeping of her daughter, Mrs. Saunders, advising her to preserve them until such time as a permanent home for them would be provided by a grateful people back at New Salem, where they were associated with the immortal Lincoln and his tragic romance with her daughter Ann.

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Chapter XXXIV

THE EVOLUTION OF COFFEE APPARATUS

A book could be written on the subject of this chapter. We shall have to be content to touch briefly upon the important developments in the devices employed. The changes that have taken place in the preparation of the drink itself will be discussed in chapter XXXVI.

In the beginning, that is, in Ethiopia, about 800 A.D., coffee was looked upon as a food. The whole ripe berries, beans and hulls, were crushed, and molded into food balls held in shape with fat. Later, the dried berries were so treated. So the primitive stone mortar and pestle were the original coffee grinder.

The dried hulls and the green beans were first roasted, some time between 1200 and 1300, in crude burnt clay dishes or in stone vessels, over open fires. These were the original roasting utensils.

Next, the coffee beans were ground between little mill-stones, one turning above the other. Then came the mill used by the Greeks and Romans for grain. This mill consisted of two conical mill stones, one hollow and fitted over the other, specimens of which have been found in Pompeii. The idea is the same as that employed in the most modern metal grinder.

Between 1400 and 1500, individual earthenware and metal coffee-roasting plates appeared. These were circular, from four to six inches in diameter, about 3⁄16 inch thick, slightly concave and pierced with small holes, something like the modern kitchen skimmer. They were used in Turkey and Persia for roasting a few beans at a time over braziers (open pans, or basins, for holding live coals). The braziers were usually mounted on feet and richly ornamented.

About the same time we notice the first appearance of the familiar Turkish pocket cylinder coffee mill and the original Turkish ibrik, or coffee boiler, made of metal. Little drinking cups of Chinese porcelain completed the service.

The original coffee boiler was not unlike the English ale mug with no cover, smaller at the top than at the bottom, fitted with a grooved lip for pouring, and a long straight handle. They were made of brass, and in sizes to hold from one to six tiny cupfuls. A later improvement was of the ewer design, with bulbous body, collar top, and cover.

The Turkish coffee grinder seems to have suggested the individual cylinder roaster which later (1650) became common, and from which developed the huge modern cylinder commercial roasting machines.

The individual coffee service of early civilization first employed crude clay bowls or dishes for drinking; but as early as 1350, Persian, Egyptian, and Turkish ewers, made of pottery, were used for serving. In the seventeenth century, ewers of similar pattern, but made of metal, were the favorite coffee-serving devices in oriental countries and in western Europe.

Between 1428 and 1448, a spice grinder standing on four legs was invented; and this was later used for grinding coffee. The drawer to receive the ground coffee was added in the eighteenth century.

Between 1500 and 1600, shallow iron dippers with long handles and foot-rests, designed to stand in open fires, were used in Bagdad, and by the Arabs in Mesopotamia, for roasting coffee. These roasters had handles about thirty-four inches long, and the bowls were eight inches in diameter. They were accompanied by a metal stirrer (spatula) for turning the beans.

Another type of roaster was developed about 1600. It was in the shape of an iron spider on legs, and was designed, like that just described, to sit in open fires. At this period pewter serving pots were first used.

Between 1600 and 1632, mortars and pestles of wood, iron, brass, and bronze came into common use in Europe for braying the roasted beans. For several centuries, coffee connoisseurs held that pounding the beans in a mortar was superior to grinding in the most efficient mill. Peregrine White's parents brought to America on the Mayflower, in 1620, a wooden mortar and pestle that were used for braying coffee to make coffee "powder."

When La Roque speaks of his father bringing back to Marseilles from Constantinople in 1644 the instruments for making coffee, he undoubtedly refers to the individual devices which at that time in the Orient included the roaster plate, the cylinder grinder, the small long-handled boiler, and fenjeyns (findjans), the little porcelain drinking cups.

When Bernier visited Grand Cairo about the middle of the seventeenth century, in all the city's thousand-odd coffee houses he found but two persons who understood the art of roasting the bean.

About 1650, there was developed the individual cylinder coffee roaster made of metal, usually tin plate or tinned copper, suggested by the original Turkish pocket grinder. This was designed for use over open fires in braziers. There appeared about this time also a combined making-and-serving metal pot which was undoubtedly the original of the common type of pot that we know today.

There appeared in England about 1660, Elford's white iron machine (sheet iron coated with tin) which was "turned on a spit by a jack.[362]" This was simply a larger size of the individual cylinder roaster, and was designed for family or commercial use. Modifications were developed by the French and Dutch. In the seventeenth century the Italians produced some beautiful designs in wrought-iron coffee roasters.

Before the advent of the Elford machine, and indeed, for two centuries thereafter, it was the common practise in the home to roast coffee in uncovered earthenware tart dishes, old pudding pans, and fry pans. Before the time of the modern kitchen stove, it was usually done over charcoal fires without flame.

The improved Turkish combination coffee grinder with folding handle and cup receptacle for the beans, used for grinding, boiling, and drinking, was first made in Damascus in 1665. About this period, the Turkish coffee set, including the long-handled boiler and the porcelain drinking cups in brass holders, also came into vogue.

In 1665, Nicholas Book, "living at the Sign of the Frying Pan in St. Tulies street," London, advertised that he was "the only known man for making of mills for grinding of coffee powder, which mills are sold by him from forty to forty-five shillings the mill."

By combining the long-handle idea contained in the Bagdad roaster with that of the original cylinder roaster, the Dutch perfected a small, closed, sheet-iron cylinder-roaster with a long handle that permitted its being held and turned in open fire places. From 1670, and well into the middle of the nineteenth century, this type of family roaster enjoyed great favor in Holland, France, England, and the United States, more especially in the country districts. The museums of Europe and the United States contain many specimens. The iron cylinder measured about five inches in diameter, and was from six to eight inches long, being attached to a three or four foot iron rod provided with a wooden handle. The green coffee was put into the cylinder through a sliding door. Balancing the roaster over the blaze by resting the end of the iron rod projecting from the far end of the roasting cylinder in a hook of the usual fireplace crane, the housekeeper was wont slowly to revolve the cylinder until the beans had turned the proper color.

Portable coffee-making outfits to fit the pocket were much in vogue in France in 1691. These included a roaster, a grinder, a lamp, the oil, cups, saucers, spoons, coffee, and sugar. The roaster was first made of tin plate or tinned copper; but for the aristocracy silver and gold were used. In 1754, a white-silver coffee roaster eight inches long and four inches in diameter was mentioned among the deliveries made to the army of the king at Versailles.

Humphrey Broadbent, "the London coffee man" wrote in 1722:

Between 1700 and 1800, there was developed a type of small portable household stove to burn coke or charcoal, made of iron and fitted with horizontal revolving cylinders for coffee roasting. These were provided with iron handles for turning. A modification of this type of roaster under a three-sided hood, and standing on three legs, was designed to sit on the hearth of open fireplaces, close to the fire or in the smoldering ashes. Because of its greater capacity, it was probably used in the inns and coffee houses for roasting large batches. Still another type, which made its appearance late in the eighteenth century, was the sheet-iron roaster suspended at the top of a tall, iron, box-like compartment, or stove, in which the fire was built. This, too, was designed to roast coffee in comparatively large quantities. In some examples it was provided with legs.

Great silver coffee pots ("with all the utensils belonging to them of the same metal") were first used by Pascal at St.-Germain's fair in Paris in 1672. It remained for the English and American silversmiths to produce the most beautiful forms of silver coffee pots; and there are some notable collections of these in England and the United States.

The oriental serving pot was nearly always of metal, tall, and, in old models, of graceful curve, with a slightly twisted ornamental beak in the form of an S, attached below the middle of the vessel. A handle ornamented in the same way formed a decorative balance.

In 1692, the lantern straight-line coffee serving pot with true cone lid, thumb-piece, and handle fixed at right angle to the spout, was introduced into England, succeeding the curved oriental serving pot. In 1700, coffee pots made of cheaper metals, like tin and Britannia ware, began to appear on the home tables of the people. In 1701, silver coffee pots appeared in England having perfect domes and bodies less tapering. Between 1700 and 1800, silver, gold, and delicate porcelain serving pots were the vogue among European royalty.

In 1704, Bull's machine for roasting coffee was patented in England. This probably marks the first use of coal for commercial roasting.

In 1710, the popular coffee roaster in French homes was a dish of varnished earthenware. This same year a novelty was introduced in France in the shape of a fustian (linen) bag for infusing ground coffee.

By 1714, the thumb-piece on English serving pots had disappeared, and the handle was no longer set at a right angle to the spout. English coffee-pot bodies showed a further modification in 1725, the taper becoming less and less.

Coffee grinders were so common in France in 1720 that they were to be had for a dollar and twenty cents each. Their development by the French had been rapid from the original spice grinder. At first, they were known as coffee mills; but in the eighteenth century, roasters came to be known by that name. They were made of iron, retaining the same principle of the horizontal mill-stones—one of which is fixed while the other moves—that the ancients employed for grinding wheat. They were squat, box-shaped affairs, having in the center a shank of iron that revolved upon a fixed, corrugated iron plate. There was also the style that fastened to the wall. At first, the drawer to receive ground coffee was missing, but this was supplied in later types. Before its invention, the ground coffee was received in a sack of greased leather, or in one treated on the outside with beeswax—probably the original of the duplex paper bag for conserving the flavor.