TEA AND COFFEE EQUIPAGES. 335 



made to a great extent, and are now scarce, and much 

 sought after by collectors. 



CLASS THIRTEEN was a very important division in the 

 productions of Wedgwood's establishment. It comprised 

 tea and coffee equipages of every variety of shape and style 

 of decoration. In this class the teapots, coffee-pots, 

 chocolates, sugar dishes, cream ewers, with cabinet cups and 

 saucers, and all the articles of the tea-table and dejeune, were 

 made in the " bamboo" and " basal tes," both plain and en- 

 riched with Grecian and Etruscan ornaments. They were 

 likewise made in jasper of two colours, " polished within 

 (not glazed) like the natural stone, ornamented with bas- 

 reliefs, and very highly finished," and of truly exquisite 

 beauty. In the catalogue issued by Josiah Wedgwood in 

 1787, is an aquatint plate printed in colours, of one of these 

 beautiful cups, in which the artist (I have reason to believe 

 Francis Eginton)* has sought to show the transparency of 



the thin jasper. This cup, with the addition of the gilding 

 from a fragment of one of these very choice pieces in 

 my own collection, I show on the accompanying engraving. 

 The material is the finest and most delicate jasper, the 

 body of intense hardness, the surface truly, as Mr. Grlad- 



* Some particulars regarding Eginton and his works will be given 

 later on. 



