Coffee Service Given as a Wedding Gift

In Staffordshire, England, during the last decade of the 18th century, two Dutch brothers, the Elers, introduced new techniques to the local pottery industry. What distinguished their wares was a salt glaze, which was later refined to produce a milky white color. White salt-glazed stoneware reached the peak of its popularity in the years 1750-70, when this coffee set was made. The forms, colors, and decorative motifs of The Jewish Museum pieces can all be paralleled in other Staffordshire stoneware of the 1750s and 1760s.
As in other European centers of the period, the potters of Staffordshire sought to imitate Chinese porcelains whose importation competed with the output of local factories. For that reason, they often favored decorative schemes based on Chinese porcelains, such as the landscape vignette and the diaper panels alternating with single floral motifs on the interiors of The Jewish Museum's waste and sugar bowls. Other Staffordshire ware with these interior decorative motifs have exteriors painted with Chinese figures. The unique aspect of The Jewish Museum set is the substitution of a representation of a Jewish wedding and Hebrew inscriptions for the usual chinoiserie.
The scene on the platter shows six figures: two officiants, two witnesses, the groom, and a heavily veiled bride. Instead of standing beneath a free-standing marriage canopy, the bridal couple is wrapped in a large prayer shawl. This custom was depicted in several 18th-century engravings, though none appears to have served as a model for the painted scene. An eagle at top center bears a banner inscribed with a biblical quotation, which serves as a chronogram: "As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, So will your God rejoice over you [5]529"(=1769) (Is. 62:5). The verse has been inverted on the plate. Further information is inscribed on the vessels: (on the coffee pot): (front) "Made in honor of… Hillel son of… Tuviah of b[lessed] m[emory] ," (back) "and his wife… Brendele daughter of Elazar Segel, of blessed memory;" (on the pitcher): "by... Zvi Hirsh son of… Abraham" (on the sugar bowl, front and back): "in Amsterdam, 24th of Sivvan [5]529"(=June 29, 1769) (and on its cover): "Anno 5529" (in the year 5529=1769).
The use of the word "made" in the inscription does not mean that Zvi Hirsh actually fashioned his wedding present, but is a common way, in older dedicatory inscriptions, of expressing that an individual commissioned a work to be done. It is only with this interpretation that one can reconcile the information in the inscription that the set was "done in Amsterdam" with the very clear artistic evidence that it was made and decorated in Staffordshire.