by Bruce Richardson
it was a common
occurrence in the colonial era to recive an invitation to " share a dish
of tea ". in 18th century Boston or Bath, a dish of tea
referred to a teacup or tea bowl containing black or green tea, placed on a saucer.
The terminology for tea equipage,
including teacups, was evolving as Western tea drinking refined their rituals
and porcelain makers, silversmiths, and furniture makers raced to invent new
and more refined " tea things" ( a Jane Austen term ) that make their
way into increasingly crowded tea tables.
Tea wares first arrived
along with chests of Chinese tea imported by the East India Company. A typical shipment
of Chinese tea were the early 1700s would have included crate upon crate of
teacups – now known as tea blows-without handles. These cups were easily nested
inside straw-filled wooden boxes; cups with handles would have taken up more
room and increased the likelihood of breakage.
I often receive queries
about how common the habit of pouring hot tea into a saucer and then sipping
from the saucer truly was. An 1846 account of early tea drinking habits in the
west included this theory:
The saucer seem to
have perplexed our ancestor at the time of its first introduction: its first
use was believed to be merely to cool the tea, and then it was unfashionable to
drink from the cup: at a later time, the use of the saucer was understood to be
confined to saving slops [ leftover tea from the cup ]. And thence forward the
cup alone was to have the honor of being raised to the lips.
The tea drinker ( the
Old Maid, 1771, courtesy of The Library of Congress ) who drinks from her
saucer in this engraving in surely not on her best behavior as she commits a
double tea faux pas by drinking from her saucer while her cat sips cream from
dish a top her tea table. The weight of her pampered pet would cause the table
to tip of not for her placing a hand on the table to keep it in balance.
Although accounts of
this not-so-polite habit appear off and on over the 18th and 19th
centuries, it should be noted that this was probably not the normal mode of
drinking tea.
On this trips through
the American colonies, Swedish traveler Pehr ( Peter ) Kalam noted that "
when the English born women drink tea, they never poured it out of the cup into
the saucer to cool it, but drink it as hot as it came from the teapot."
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