Artifact Spotlight: Tea Time

With tickets now on sale for our yearly Tea Party at the Ingomar Club in Carson Mansion,  we wanted to share some more information on the history of tea parties- and some photos of the beautiful tea sets we have in the museum collections!

Tea in England

While nowadays tea and England are seen as inseparable as pumpkin spice and autumn, it wasn’t always that way. Tea was traditionally grown and cultivated in Asia and arrived in England via trade routes, however in the early 1800s, tea was being cultivated in England and decreasing in price, making it more available to the general public. Before widespread sanitation practices, tea could be safer than commonly available drinking water due to boiling the water before steeping the tea.

As with most fashion trends, tea parties started with the royalty. Traditionally, meals in England were eaten twice a day: Breakfast in the early morning and dinner around 8 pm. The Duchess of Bedford (who happened to be a close friend of Queen Victoria of Victorian Era fame), began ordering tea and snacks in the early afternoon to fend off what she called a “sinking feeling” in the afternoon. The afternoon snacking session grew when she began inviting friends for tea and gossip and the concept of a tea party caught on like wildfire. With Queen Victoria’s attendance at some of these teas, they became staples of society and were mimicked with modifications by the middle and lower classes, creating a myriad of tea events such as

• elevensies: not only for hobbits, this is England’s morning coffee time
  
• meat tea or high tea: served when people came home from work, but before 8 pm dinner, featured what is more like a multiple courses of heartier snacks with tea
  
• afternoon tea: early afternoon casual snacking and tea time
  
• cream tea: Tea with scones and clotted cream, the most basic of teas
  
• royale tea: Tea served after champagne or before sherry
  

Etiquette writers in true, social structuring fashion, took on the trend and devised books of rules on how to behave before and during tea parties, including how people are invited, how to RSVP, who serves what, and if servants should or shouldn’t be present (after all, you wanted to be sure they didn’t hear the gossip that was undoubtedly being passed around during the party). The parties ranged in size from small, intimate affairs, to an event with 200 people in attendance. The rise of tea parties didn’t just affect how people socialized, but had effects that reached outward to how homes were built (with parlors to accommodate guests for tea) and fashion (with the rise of a looser-fitting dresses that were called tea gowns). There are even records of interior designers working with fashion designers to coordinate dresses with colors and patterns present in parlors, to ensure that the hostess and her parlor were complementary during tea time.

While the concept of tea time hasn’t become something of a daily ritual in America as it is in England, the tea parties made it into the American imagination through books like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which originated right around the same time as the rise in popularity of tea time.

Cups, Mustaches, handles, and saucers: A brief history of the teacup

Chawan with hare's fur pattern and black glaze, Jian ware, from Jianyang in China, Song dynasty (Wikipedia)

Teacups, of course, are central to the concept of tea, and over time, their appearance has changed. The earliest teacups from Asia were small, with no handles. These kinds of tea cups are still in use today around the world.

With time, a saucer, or small plate that the teacup sits on, was added to serve a double purpose: protect the teacup carrier from the hot sides of the teacup, and as a method to cool hot tea by pouring the tea from the cup into the saucer and sipping from the saucer rather than the cup. A handle was eventually added to the cup itself, which led to the saucer being more of a decorative element rather than a utilitarian one.  

Part of a tea set originally owned by HH Buhne.
​Ella Craddock Brown Collection.

Mustache tea cup

With the rise of the perfectly shaped wax mustache in men (attributed to the enforcement of mustaches as part of the British military uniform), the “mustache teacup”, or more simply mustache cup was invented. The cup featured a shelf on the inside of the cup to protect the wax on the mustache from melting when it came in contact the with the steam that rose off of hot tea. With the decline of the waxed mustache, mustache teacups also fell out of style.

A third kind of teacup actually resembles more of a bowl-teacup hybrid: the two-handled teacup. This cup held consomme (a type of soup) or other treats at tea parties when the hostess didn’t want to get a soup bowl. The double handles also made it easier to feed soup or broth to ill people who may not be able to drink from a cup with one handle or a bowl with no handles. They were also used for hot chocolate, another favorite drink during the Victorian period. ​

Double handled tea cup

While looking through the collections to find teacups for this article, I came across this little gem of a cup shaped like a shell. Turns out it was a souvenir purchased in Arcata! 

We hope to see you at our upcoming tea party at the Carson Mansion! If you haven't gotten tickets yet, be sure to purchase them here! Not a member but want to attend? You can sign up to be a member here or stop by the museum to sign up!