Designer: Michael Graves (1934 – 2015)

Item: The Big Dripper coffee service.

Manufactured by: Japanese manufacturer for Swid Powell not yet identified

Country of origin: Japan

Year made: 1986

Materials: Glazed stoneware with enamel glaze and gilding.

Dimensions: Coffee pot is 11 ¼” x 8 ¾”

Condition: Excellent unused condition. Near mint.

References: Tapert, Annette. SWID POWELL: Objects by Architects, Rizzoli, 1990.

Description: Here is perhaps Michael Graves most well-known design for Swid Powell. Initially Graves designed The Big Dripper , a 14 cup coffee pot with coffee filter holder in 1986, and the next year designed The Little Dripper, which was a 10 cup coffee pot with filter holder and a sugar and creamer to match. The original drawing for this pot is in the Tapert book on page 45 and his drawings for the sugar and creamer are on page 39. According to both the Tapert book and the 1986 Swid Powell sales color brochure, these sets were born from Graves’ preference for drip coffee and the lack of available drip coffee makers that met his esthetic standards. The Little Dripper set was a very popular design in its time that sold well, but examples of the The Big Dripper are a little harder to find, because the Tapert book indicates that The Little Dripper was the model in production as of the time that book was published in 1990.

The coffee pot is marked in the glaze “© Swid Powell” and then Michael Graves’s signature and “The Big Dripper”. The filter holder only has the earlier Swid Powell mark. The creamer and sugar are each marked “Swid Powell” his signature and “© Michael Graves 1987” and both also retain their original “Made in Japan” stickers.

Examples of this important post modernism design can be found in the permanent collections of the, the Brooklyn Museum, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the RISD Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery, which also has the original design drawing for this in its collection.

Usually the coffee pots and teapots produced for Swid Powell have crazing in the glaze from use and the expansion and contraction of the stoneware from hot liquids being put into cooler containers. Because stoneware is fired at a lower temperature than porcelain it is less durable. This finding flawless examples is difficult.