After the Elers brothers left Staffordshire red stoneware does not seem to have been made until the 1740s or 1750s, after which it remained popular for tea and coffee ware until the 1770s. In the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries it appeared in neo-classical guise, as rosso antico, the name given to it by Wedgwood in 1776.

The tapering, straight-sided body of this coffee pot is similar to silver pots of the 1720s and 1730s but it is combined with a markedly rococo handle and spout. The asymmetrically placed sprays of blossom were made in plaster of Paris moulds and after removal were applied to the surface using slip to make them adhere. Joseph Edge, whose name is incised on the base, is almost certainly the Joseph Edge, earth potter, who married Mary Newton at Stoke-on-Trent on 8 September 1759. He has not been identified as a pottery owner and was probably a workman.

Many Staffordshire potters made red stoneware between about 1745 and 1780, but only a few names can be firmly associated with it on the basis of marks or other evidence. They include Josiah Wedgwood, William Greatbatch, Richard Myatt, Thomas Barker and a member of the Astbury family. Progress in linking the widely scattered examples to these and other makers will only come about through matching their features with excavated material and the painstaking scrutiny of local records.