The Dutch city of Delft was renowned for the production of blue and white, tin-glazed earthenware in imitation of Chinese porcelain. This teapot is an example of brown delftware, decorated with yellow floral sprays and surmounted by a ball finial. Brown and black delftware is rare and these ground colours were created by the Delft potters from the 1700s to imitate luxurious lacquer, the East-Asian material highly prized in the West.
The production of these lustrous colours were a challenge to delftware potters and various factories attempted to produce them. The most successful maker of brown-ground delft was Lieve van Dalen, the proprietor of Het Jonge Moriaanshooft (The Young Moor’s Head) Factory for twenty years, and whose mark ‘LVD’ appears on this teapot. His mark also features on other rare surviving examples of these wares including tea and table wares and vases. The lid of the teapot is mounted with silver in the shape of a peacock perched on a flowerhead, and is connected by a chain to a hinged foliate mount on the handle. Mounting Chinese porcelain became fashionable during the 17th and early 18th centuries to demonstrate the luxury and rarity of these imported objects and European potters copied this form of decoration. A similar example of a brown delft teapot by Lieve van Dalen is in the Rijksmuseum (BK-NM-11746).
