Coffee and tea set; Meissen, Dietrich period, 1764- 1774.

Coffee and tea set; Meissen, Dietrich period, 1764- 1774.
Glazed hard paste porcelain, underglaze glazed and gilded. Deutche blumen decoration.
It has incised decoration under the pouring spout of the teapot and relief mounts applied with slip.
It presents slight losses in the gilding.
It shows marks under cover on the base.
Measurements; 26.5 x 17 x 13 cm (larger); 4.5 x 9.5 x 8 cm (smaller).
Coffee and tea set composed of 21 pieces; Milk pot, teapot, coffee pot, four tea cups and four plates, four coffee cups and four plates, a bowl and a small plate. All the pieces are decorated with gilded motifs as edge finishes and with country-themed figurative scenes on the central body, including the plates. All the painted scenes show a couple in a landscape. In fact this ornamentation has a great similarity to two pieces belonging to the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London ( C.102: 1; 2.1992 and C. 42 . 1956). The scenes are inspired by those of the French painter Antoine Watteau, which were very fashionable in Meissen porcelain in the 18th century. His work was widely disseminated through "L'Oeuvre d'Antoine Watteau", a collection of 271 engravings made by various engravers based on Watteau's paintings. In 1738, the Meissen Manufactory and the royal collection of Saxon prints acquired a copy that served as a valuable source of images for the factory's painters.
The Meissen Manufactory was the first European factory to produce authentic porcelain. The manufacture was started by the scientist Ehrenfried Walther von Tchirnhaus in 1708, and after his untimely death his work was continued by Joahnn Friedrich Böttger, who remained practically imprisoned on the factory premises in order to protect the secret of the porcelain formula. The production of Meissen porcelain began in 1710, one year after the factory was founded by Augustus the Strong, and soon achieved great fame throughout Europe. In order to prevent forgeries, he introduced his famous mark, two crossed swords, in 1720, making his one of the oldest pottery marks in existence (it still remains on the pieces of Meissen's heir firm, the Staatliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Meissen GMBH). Initially, Meissen's production imitated oriental production, especially Japanese kakiemon ("indianische Blumen"), although enameled pieces with landscape, floral and gallant themes were also produced, the latter derived from the painting of the Frenchman Antoine Watteau. Undecorated glazed porcelain pieces were also produced, which were sold to other workshops, where they were decorated with enamels. However, in 1717 a former Meissen worker, Samuel Stöltzel, sold the secret of porcelain to a manufactory in Vienna, and by 1760 there were about thirty manufacturers of genuine porcelain in Europe. However, most of these manufactures produced soft-paste porcelain, due to the difficulty of accessing kaolin, the basic ingredient of authentic porcelain (hard paste).