The thumb-piece, which is a familiar feature upon the tankards
of the period.

5. The handle fixed at right angles to the spout.

[Illustration: LANTERN COFFEE POT, 1692]

[Illustration: FOLKINGHAM POT, 1715-16]

Mr. Ellis, in a paper before the Society of Antiquaries[361] on the
earliest form of coffee pot, says:

If coffee was first introduced into this country by the Turkey
merchants, nothing is more probable than that those who first
brought the berry, brought also the vessel in which it was to be
served. Such a vessel would be the Turkish ewer whose shape is
familiar to us, the same today as two hundred years ago, for in the
East things are slow to change. And throughout the reign of the
second Charles, so long as the extended use of coffee in the houses
of the people was retarded by the opposition of the Women of
England, and by the scarcely less powerful influence of the King's
Court, the small requirements of a mere handful of coffee-houses
would be easily met by the importation of Turkish vessels.
Reference to the coffee-house keepers' tokens in the Beaufoy
collection in the Guildhall Museum shows that many of the traders
of 1660-1675 adopted as their trade sign a hand pouring coffee from
a pot. This pot is invariably of the Turkish ewer pattern. It is
true that there is nothing to show that the Turks themselves ever
served coffee from the ewer, but it is scarcely conceivable that
the English coffee-house keepers should have adopted as their trade
sign, their pictorial advertisement, so to speak, a vessel which
had no connection with the commodity in which they dealt, and which
would convey no meaning associated with coffee to the public. But
as soon as the extended use of the beverage created a demand which
stimulated a home manufacture of coffee-pots, a new departure is
apparent. The undulating outlines beloved by the Orientals, bowed
as their scimitars, curvilinear as their graceful flowing script,
do not commend themselves to the more severe Western taste of the
period which had then declared its preference for sweet simplicity
in silversmiths' work, such as we see in the basons, cups, and
especially the flat-topped tankards of that day. The beauty of the
straight line had asserted its power, and fashion felt its sway.
Such was the feeling