Pair of Blue and White Fluted Oval Monteiths, Delft circa 1730

Each marked CK 3 2 and 14 for Cornelis Koppens, owner of De Metaale Pot (The Metal Pot) Factory from 1724 to 1757

Each painted around the compressed body with a wide border of stylized fruit clusters and leaves pendent from leaf scrolls and alternating with smaller floral pendants below a foliate border around the shoulder and eight lobes on the rim, each centering a floral sprig amidst scrolls extending to form a narrow border around the rim, their interior sides painted with a beribboned Chinese symbol above a scroll border, the ends molded in high relief with a handle formed as a lion mask clasping in his mouth an integral ring, the bottom affixed with four blue paw
feet, and the interior painted with a central peony blossom within a lozenge-shaped cartouche formed by foliate scrolls issuing floral and foliate pendants.

Wine glass coolers, also named monteiths after a Scottish nobleman known to wear a cloak with a serrated hem, were filled with cool water or ice, and used for chilling and cooling or rinsing wine glasses.

The forms were initially thought to be a late seventeenth-century French invention, where they were first created in silver to accompany the wine fountain or cistern and the wine bottle cooler in the increasingly grand displays of kings, princes and ambassadors. However, they were probably invented in England around 1680.