Herend Porcelain Rothschild Bird Hand-Painted Demitasse Coffee Service for Eight — Discontinued Forms, Eight Distinct Motifs
A complete, physically verified Herend Rothschild Bird (RO) demitasse coffee service for eight — eleven pieces in total, every one of them discontinued by Herend and no longer in current production.
The service comprises a lidded coffee pot (1613/RO) with the pattern's signature hand-modeled rose finial, a matching creamer (1643/RO), a lidded covered sugar (1665/RO, also rose-finialed), and eight cup-and-saucer pairs (1709/RO). Every piece is entirely hand-painted and hand-gilded in Herend's workshops, with green-handled treatment specific to this particular production run and the pattern's characteristic molded basketweave border beneath a gilt rim.
What sets this set apart: the eight cup-and-saucer pairs carry eight distinct bird-pair motifs drawn from the Rothschild Bird pattern's twelve canonical designs — no two cups decorated alike. Most assembled demitasse services of this kind repeat a single motif eight times over; this one reads instead as a small curated survey of the pattern's design family, verified across all sixteen individual pieces (eight cups, eight saucers) with consistent backstamp format throughout.
The Rothschild Bird pattern dates to around 1860, registered for the Rothschild banking family, and remains one of Herend's most recognized designs — a hallmark of hand-painted porcelain artistry from a maker whose work has furnished European royal households since Queen Victoria's own 1851 commission.
Condition: Excellent throughout. One disclosed cosmetic note: tiny paint loss to the tip of one petal on the covered sugar's rose finial — confirmed to be surface paint only, not a porcelain chip or crack. The coffee pot, creamer, and all eight cup-and-saucer pairs show no chips, cracks, hairlines, or restoration.
Because every form in this service is discontinued, a complete, matched, condition-verified set of this kind grows harder to assemble every year — current secondary-market stock across these forms is extremely thin, with the sugar bowl currently unavailable entirely.
"But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you". Matthew 6:33