Tea Sets, Can You Imagine This?

Picture a traditional tea and you may well imagine an elaborate silver tea set with a gracious Victorian hostess pouring Earl Grey. Did you ever wonder who began the whole tea set tradition?

Well it was the Chinese, centuries ago, but I since I want to chat about the Victorian style sets and I don’t want to get into a long history lesson that aspect of it will wait.

Tea was first brought into Portugal by a missionary who had spent time in China. Prior to his documentation of the use of tea caravans had brought small amounts in to Europe but no one really knew what to do with them. Rather than making a drink they ate the leaves and poured off the tea. Can you imagine?

Anyway, tea came in to Portugal and spread quickly to Holland. In the 1600s tea was rare and only a drink of the very wealthy. It sold for $100 a pound and more. Because of the cost the tea sets the Europeans created were tiny, miniature sets, holding small amounts of tea.

Soon the Dutch began serving tea in public tea rooms and they served it with ginger, sugar, and milk. The servers needed a way to get the tea and condiments to the table and so tea sets were born of this necessity. The accouterments were not common yet but they were in their infant stages.

As tea became more readily available the prices dropped. Tea became something of a celebration, a way of serving guests. According to Emmerson Creek Pottery :

In 1680, the Marquise de Seven, a leading social critic of her time, first advocated the addition of a creamer to the tea service and the sugar basket was soon to follow. It was during the reign of Queen Anne (early 18th century) that silver sugar baskets were first offered to guests. The first silver sugar bowls featured rounded bases, disk-like covers, and three little feet. Silver creamers also date to this period, and by the mid-18th century, something like the tea set that we know today had arrived on the tables of Europe and America.

The tradition of afternoon tea is believed to have begun by the Duchess of Bedford. She needed a little something to tide her over between meals and requested that a light snack be served in the afternoons. Soon she invited others to join her and a tradition was born. Of course, Queen Victoria imbued the tea set with the popularity that it holds. She loved tea and introduced the traditional afternoon tea to the world, making it popular among Victorians, those worshipers of all things ceremonious.

Traditional tea sets might include:

• Tea pot
• Coffee pot
• Chocolate pot
• Creamer or milk jug
• Sugar bowl
• A waste bowl which was a container for the discarded leaves
• A tea caddy
• A tea caddy spoon
• A tray

Of course, you can find sets with more pieces, and some with less.

I love tea sets. I don’t have one because I don’t do that kind of entertaining…my tea parties consist of vintage and antique china tea pots and a mish-mash of vintage cups. Tea sets are elegant though!

image: Mary Cassatt via Wikimedia