Coffee Pot

The body of this coffee pot is decorated with wrigglework engraved ornament: on one side a peafowl atop a tree branch with engraved stylized tulip and other rosette-and thistle-like floral and leaf motifs with smaller flowers on leafy stems flanking the branch at the base; the reverse having an eagle with outspread wings flanked by an American flag standing on a foliate and floral branch with a stylized flower or thistle on a scrolling tendril.

Bands of  wrigglework borders encircle the top and base of the body. The lid is decorated with wrigglework motifs in the form of bands of stylized tulips and rosettes.  The handle is engraved with an undulating serpent; the spout has vertical bands and horizontal borders.

Wrigglework was a type of engraving popular on European and English pewter and iron during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries but which was adapted by Pennsylvania German craftsmen to the less-expensive medium of tin.  A pointed stylus was moved over the surface in a series of short, zigzag strokes to create a “wriggled” effect.

The imagery appears to be a combination of traditional Germanic motifs, such as the tulip and peafowl, and patriotic American motifs exemplified by the eagle and flag, indicative of the confluence of differing cultures in southeastern Pennsylvania during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, where the process of acculturation was gradual.