marked M&C, O, M&C, town mark, of large baluster form with high relief chased Rococo decoration of slightly chinoiserie form, with bird within branches with nest, fruits and feeding bird, with S scroll handle and fine leaf capped thumbpiece, the hinged cover with removable acorn finial (28.5cm high, 33.8oz) Footnote: Note: Although Scottish coffee pots are rare, similar pots but for chocolate are even rarer and very few examples are recorded. In The Compendium Of Scottish Silver by R & J Dietert, between c.1720 and c.1765 only five chocolate pots are listed (although three others are known since publication) while for the same period forty six coffee pots are recorded. It is interesting to note that two of these are Glasgow made. One by Milne & Campbell (Sotheby’s New York 16 th April 2005, lot 265) and Adam Graham (in Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museum collection). When you add to this the earliest known example by Robert Bruce of Edinburgh, c.1720, which is in Dundee Museum & Art Galleries and the 1720-21 example by Patrick Murray of Edinburgh and presented as the Selkirk Race Prize in that year is within the National Museums of Scotland collection , examples available to collectors few and this lot offers an opportunity for the serious collector to add to their collection. All these are much later than their English counterparts, which not common, do survive from as early as 1685. Although their form follows almost directly that of the coffee pots of the period, their function is quite different. The placement of the spout of a coffee pot is particularly done to avoid the bitter coffee grounds from being poured into the cup. However , with chocolate the heavier coco sediment was intended to be drunk and indeed likely the most flavoursome part. Therefore, altering the design of the coffee pot to allow the finial to be removed, either by simply pulling out or hinging, allowed a stirrer (or molinet) to be placed in to stir the sediments up just before pouring. While very few English molinets do survive no Scottish examples are recorded. It is also likely that both north and south of the border that wooden stirrers would have been more common place.