STEFANIE MOY-SHUSTER Submitted photo Tea sets as we know it today first appeared in the 1790s. These simply shaped vessels are called slop or waste bowls.
Afternoon tea is one of those pleasant breaks in the day. It can be as simple as carrying a mug with you as you walk around the garden or as elaborate as bringing out a lovely silver or china tea set, making cucumber sandwiches and a cake and inviting a group of friends to spend a civilized hour with you at four o'clock.
The custom of the tea party as we know it is relatively recent compared to the long history of tea drinking itself.
Tea came to Europe from China in the early 1630s, brought by Portuguese traders to France. It became terribly chic at the court of Louis XIV at Versailles where, in spite or perhaps because of how expensive it was, it was drunk in huge quantities.
One noblewoman, Mme. De Sevigny, wrote to her daughter that "the Princesse de Tarente takes 12 cups of tea a day, which she says cures all her ills." She also mentions M. de Landgrave, who drank 40 cups every morning and swore it revived him as he lay dying. Remember though that teacups in the 17th century were tiny— only about two inches in diameter. They were often shipped from China in the crates of tea.
Tea drinking became fashionable in England when Charles II married the Portuguese infanta, Catherine of Braganza. As part of her huge dowry, the English were granted permission to use all the Portuguese ports in Asia, giving England direct trading rights to tea.
The East India Company was given a monopoly on trade in the Far East and by the late 1760s, the British were exporting 6 million pounds of tea a year from China.
When it was first served in the coffee houses in London in about 1660, tea had to be explained to the public, but within a very short time, and with royal patronage, it quickly became the fashionable drink in all the best houses.
The growing popularity of tea saw the development of specialized equipment for storing it (tea caddies), making it (tea kettles set over spirit lamps) and serving it (the teapot). It also spurred on the search for a European equivalent to Chinese porcelain for it was thought that earthenware (the only type of china then made in Europe) was not fine enough to hold the glamorous new drink.
Porcelain was first successfully produced in England in about 1740 and soon replaced imported Chinese cups and teapots.
The tea service as we know it, either in silver or porcelain, first appeared in the 1790s. It consisted of a teapot, milk jug, sugar bowl, sometimes a hot water jug for replenishing the pot and a simply shaped open bowl like the ones shown here. The matching tray, which is often seen with a silver tea set was a later, Victorian addition.
These pretty bowls are known by the rather inelegant name of slop bowls or sometimes waste bowls. Every tea set had one until the widespread use of the teabag began in the decades after the First World War.
Tea until then always meant loose leaf tea, put directly in the pot. When a cup of tea was poured, a few leaves always escaped into the cup. Before a second cup was poured, the cup was rinsed with a little hot water and the residue was poured into the slop bowl. (The tea strainer held over the cups as tea was poured and the tea ball to hold the leaves were "genteel" Victorian refinements).
It became quite the rage in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to "read the tea leaves" before the cups were rinsed and it's easy to imagine groups of giddy young girls at informal tea parties eagerly looking to see if the tea leaves foretold good fortune or a handsome young man in the pattern they made in the cup.
All but one of the slop bowls shown date from about 1850 and were all probably made in Staffordshire, the great centre for English pottery and china. The largest bowl, on the left is about seven inches in diameter, quite large in comparison to the others which measure between four and five inches. It is part of what might be called an everyday tea set, with a correspondingly large tea pot, covered sugar bowl and milk jug. It is decorated with sprays of leaves in a brilliant cornflower blue interspersed with green lines.
The bowl at the top right is the only one that is marked but then only with the pattern name "Tokio." It is decorated with a blue and white transfer print of a vaguely Japanese landscape scene. The bowl at the bottom left is the smallest and is plain white with a simple overall decoration of dark pink lustre dots.
The upturned bowl at the bottom right is also decorated with a blue and white transfer print of country scenes in panels interspersed with elaborate scrolls and flowers. The inside rim of the bowl has a smaller version of the same design and a charming vignette of two boys fishing with a church in the background. The edges of the bowl are highlighted with pink lustre lines.
The bowl in the centre is later than the others. Its straight sides, all over ribbed exterior and the style of the delicate decoration of pink and yellow flowering branches and bluebirds suggest at later date of about 1900.
If you buy a complete tea set, bowls like these are easy to identify. However, sold on their own, they are often mistakenly labelled as open sugar bowls, centrepieces or sweetmeat dishes. Once you know what you are looking at, they are quite fun to collect and unless they are very fine china, can be surprisingly affordable.
You might want to revive the old custom of rinsing the cups and emptying the leaves in the slop bowl, but then again, with summer just ahead, you might also search out a pretty slop bowl to hold a lovely low arrangement of flowers from your garden.
Gay Guthrie is the proprietor of Sixty One and has an extensive background in antiques and as a museum curator.
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