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How to Identify an Antique Coffee Pitcher

Antique coffee pitchers and pots are used for serving coffee. Usually, brewed coffee is poured into the body of the vessel and then poured into individual coffee cups through a spout located near the top of the pitcher. Antique coffee pitchers come in a variety of materials, including silver and silver plate, enamelware, porcelain and glass. Many pots also brew coffee, either by simple heating or by percolating. Antique coffee pitchers and pots predate the automatic drip brewing systems that first became common in the 1970s.

Instructions

- 1
  Examine the shape of the antique coffee pitcher. In the 17th century, pots typically featured a wide, bulging body. At that time, coffee was made by boiling the coffee beans in hot water, and the bulge in the pitcher body was designed to catch the grounds. A similar design was used with the linen "coffee bags" that were developed in France in the early 1700s.
- 2
  Look for an antique coffee pitcher that consists of one chamber stacked on top of another. This two-chambered pot design belongs to the French drip method of coffee preparation. In the French dip method, invented around 1800, hot water drips through the grounds in the top of the pot, and the fresh-brewed coffee is collected in the bottom part of the vessel.
- 3
  Identify antique coffee percolators by the three-tiered design of the pitcher. Hot water from the bottom chamber travels up a tube through the middle of the pitcher. Ground coffee beans sit in the top chamber, a kind of mesh basket preventing the grounds from falling down into the middle chamber. The hot water from the tube slowly drips down onto the beans, and fresh coffee is served up from a spout connected to the middle chamber. A Parisian metalworker developed the earliest percolator in 1819.
- 4
  See a pair of glass bowls, one on top of the other. These antique coffee pots are variants of the percolator. Known as vacuum pots, they force hot water up from the bottom through a tube into the top chamber. Some versions, called balance type coffee pots, feature side-by-side pots. Cooling down the antique coffee pitcher stops the brewing process by keeping the water in the heating chamber. As with percolators, these antique vacuum pots also feature small baskets to hold the grounds.

Antiques