This week enjoy an excerpt from Liza Gusler, one of our own product managers and a confessed "chinaholic", as she answers questions about china, tea, and 18th century entertaining. 
Q: What pieces would have been included for a complete tea table?
A: You'veasked about one of my favorite areas of research and collecting! All of the objects that we associate with the tea table were introduced to Europe (and the colonies) in the late 17th and early 18th centuries as Europeans discovered tea from China, coffee from the near east, and chocolate from South America. Various shapes for serving and drinking these exotic new hot beverages were "codified" so that ladies came to expect that a specific shape had a designated function. Those in the social know understood the use of new equipage for the tea table. This secret code of etiquette and equipage served as a social screening device as a rising middle class wanted to partake of the tea ceremony.
Tea was served in a globular vessel (inspired by Chinese wine pots), and coffee was served in tall slender pots, often in a lighthouse shape. Tea cups were in a bowl shape, with no handle. Coffee and chocolate cups had handles, and were usually cylindrical (very much like demitasse today.) Saucers for all kinds of cups were usually interchangeable, so a set might have twelve tea cups, twelve coffee cups, and only twelve saucers. Sugar bowls (which held pieces chipped from a sugar cone) had covers, as did most jugs for milk or hot water. The "slop" bowl, larger than the sugar bowl or tea cups, was for discarding tea dregs. The spoon tray was a lozenge-shaped dish. You'd need silver sugar tongs and small tea spoons. For boiling water, you'd use a tea kettle in the first half of the eighteenth century, gradually replaced by a hot water urn. Expensive tea leaves were stored in a tea canister, often kept in a wooden or japanned tea chest.
Early in the 18th century serving pieces were usually silver, and the cups and saucers were Chinese export porcelain. By the 1760s English manufactories were beginning to make matched tea sets in porcelain and pottery. The demand for fashionable tea wares was a huge impetus toward the Industrial Revolution, providing inexpensive ceramic dining wares and "Sheffield plate" (silver plated serving pieces.)
Q: Colonial documents refer to a saucer of tea - did they actually drink tea from the saucer?
A: From my research in Virginia documents and British prints and paintings, I suspect that some people of lower social rank drank from saucers, but that an 18th-century "Miss Etiquette" would not consider it "the done thing." There is a satirical print called "Lady Nightcap at Breakfast" that shows a young woman sipping from a saucer. Her costume hints that "Lady Nightcap" might not be received for tea in the best London drawing rooms. I've never seen someone sipping from a saucer in more formal period "conversation" paintings, which often depict gentry families or parties taking tea.
Q: Can you describe a typical 18th or 19th century dinner party experience?
A: You all have asked such good questions! You've sent me scrambling to my files from my years as teaching curator. I remembered a fabulous description I used in an exhibit on dining at the DeWitt Wallace Museum. It gives mouth-watering details of a dinner at the Carter family's Shirley Plantation on the James River in Virginia in the 1830s. Here is Henry Barnard's description, in "The South Atlantic States in 1833, as Seen by a New Englander," published in the Maryland Historical Magazine in December 1918, pp. 319-20.
" . . .dinner . . .is usually at 3.. . . about a half hour before dinner, the gentlemen are invited out to take grog. When dinner is ready (and by the way Mrs. Carter has nothing to do with setting the table, and old family servant, who for 50 years has superintended that matter, does all that) Mr. Carter politely takes a Lady by the hand and leads the way into the dining room, and is followed by the rest, each Lady lead [sic] by a gentleman. Mrs. C. is at one end of the table with a large dish of rich soup, and Mr. C. at the other, with a saddle of fine mutton, scattered round the table, you may choose for yourself, ham—beef—turkey—ducks—eggs with greens—etc., etc.—for vegetables, potatoes, beets—hominy—This last you will find always at dinner, it is made of their white corn and beans and is a very fine dish—after you have dined, there circulates a bottle of sparkling champagne. After that off passes the things and the upper table cloth, and upon that is placed the desert [sic], consisting of fine plum pudding, tarts, etc, etc,--after this comes ice cream, West India preserves—peaches preserved in brandy, etc,--When you have eaten this, off goes the second table cloth, and then upon the bare mahogany table is set, the figs, rasins [sic], and almonds, and before Mr. Carter is set 2 or 3 bottles of wine—Madeira, Port, and a sweet wine for the Ladies—he fills his glass, and pushes them on, after the glasses are all filled, the gentlemen pledge their services to the Ladies, and down goes the wine, after the first and second glass the ladies retire, and the gentlemen begin to circulate the bottle pretty briskly. You are at liberty however to follow the Ladies as soon as you please, who after music and a little chit chat prepare for the ride home."
Q: What sorts of centerpieces would an 18th-century hostess use on her dining table?
A: Just as today, symmetry and imagination were the most important ingredients in tabletop design. Floral centerpieces were not used in the 18th century, so the hostess wanted to create a pleasingly balanced arrangement of her delicacies and serving pieces. Food was on the table when diners sat down—presentation was more important than food temperature! A particularly handsome roast goose might crown the table's center, with sauce boats off each corner. Play with your own serving pieces, and combine some surprises. Try balancing complementary-shaped serving pieces, candlesticks, sauceboats, and something unexpected on your table and find how much fun it is to design an 18th-century-style tablescape.
The dessert course allowed the host to have real fun with the table setting. Let's look to the Governor's Palace in Williamsburg, which, of course, set the high water mark for elaborate tables in Virginia. Lord Botetourt owned several glass pyramids, 21 glass salvers, and dozens of jelly and syllabub glasses, flower stands, and sweet meat glasses to use on them. A store room held a "Chinese temple," which may have been used as a table centerpiece. Talented cooks could make sugar temples, set them on mirrored ponds or plateaus, and decorate them with ceramic or marzipan figures. Another popular dessert centerpiece was the silver epergne, a basket on stand for fruit, with arms holding small dishes for nuts and sweetmeats. Pyramids of fruit, such as the classic apple cone with pineapple as its crown, were a festive treat for dessert.
Dessert plates were likely a different material or pattern from that used for the first two courses. In the 1760s, for instance, the fashionable hostess might serve dessert from English porcelain dishes enameled in fruit or floral designs at the Chelsea, Worcester, or Bow manufactories. Originals of WILLIAMSBURG dinnerware patterns such as Mottahedeh's Duke of Gloucester, Chelsea Bird, or our new Lady Charlotte's Lily were probably all made for the dessert table. Carry on an 18th-century dining tradition by choosing your favorite pattern and start by collecting dessert plates. [Could be first step toward chinamania.]
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