Career
His early career was as a modeller for Duesbury at the china factory on Nottingham Road in Derby, England. The latter part of his life was spent in America. Coffee worked for William Duesbury in Derby, but he also worked at Pinxton Porcelain and potteries at Friar Gate in Derby and at the village of Church Gresley.
During his time in Derby, Coffee made busts of some of the local dignitaries and historic figures including a life size bust of Erasmus Darwin.
This bust is a fine example of Coffee"s modelling skills and is now on display at Derby Museum. Coffee also produced a terra cotta copy of the Florentine Boar (1806) and a number of terra cotta statues of Greek figures representing medicine and healing for the garden of Joseph Strutt.
The boar was destroyed duiring World World War II but has been recently replaced. Joseph Strutt"s garden was given to the town as Derby Arboretum in 1840 complete with statues, but those of the Greek figures are now missing or lost.
Coffee also made a 10-foot-tall (30 m) terra cotta statue of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine, for William Strutt"s Derbyshire Infirmary which was mounted above a dome at the very pinnacle of the newly designed hospital.
He also made the ornamental plaster mouldings for Jefferson"s house and for the University of Virginia. Coffee also sculpted a stature of Winfield Scott which later served as a model for an engraving of Scott on a United States. Postage stamp, issued in 1870.