Silver, English (possibly provincial), ca. 1710, unmarked.

Silver bowl and saucer, the bowl with a round foot and spreading hexagonal rim, the saucer with a round foot and hexagonal rim. Engraved on the side of the bowl and in the centre of the saucer with the arms of Broughton or Legge on a lozenge.

Given by Mrs Margaret Schaw Foley

The bowl and saucer are unmarked, and nothing is known of their maker. The composition of the silver of the saucer was analysed by spectroscopy at the London assay office in 1984, and found to be below sterling standard. The impurities were consistent with a 1600-1700 date, and the high copper content was consistent with provincial silver produced during this period. (See Metalwork section departmental records).
The arms on the bowl and saucer are difficult to identify with certainty. The Broughton (or Browton) family do not appear to be well-recorded; the Legge family, as Earls of Dartmouth, are better chronicled (see Handley: 2008 and The Complete Peerage: 2000, vol. 2). The lozenge-shaped shield which bears the arms engraved on the bowl and saucer is a form used to denote arms belonging to a woman (Glynn: 1983, p. 7). However, the lack of any additional crest or motto make positive identification of these arms impossible.
The Museum was presented with the bowl and saucer in 1930 by Mrs Margaret Schaw Foley, once married to the artist Edward Foley (whom she divorced on the grounds of domestic violence and infidelity: the case was reported in The Times, Thursday, Aug 11, 1898; pg. 4; Issue 35592; col D). She died, aged 80, in June 1943.

Historical significance: This is a rare survival of an early tea bowl and saucer, and is particularly interesting because it is made of silver. The heat-conducting properties of silver, coupled with the gradual increase in porcelain imports, meant that early silver tea bowls were often melted down and refashioned. This example imitates similar bowls of Chinese porcelain.

Tea, prepared with boiling water and drunk as hot as the mouth could stand, represented a new type of beverage. Hot drinks, such as alcoholic cordials, tended to be sipped for medicinal purposes in Western Europe until the mid-seventeenth-century. Drinks that accompanied food, such as wine, beer and flavoured water, were always drunk cold. Although tea merchants stressed the health benefits of this new drink (it was said to clear the head and ease menstrual pains, among other things), but in fact this was a hot drink that was not consumed primarily as a medicine, but was served at elegant social gatherings. Tea became fashionable in England from 1650 onwards, but it was the increasing imports of refined cane sugar which sweetened the bitter brew that ensured its enduring popularity. This new drink required new vessels and initially Western potters and silversmiths imitated the form of tea bowls from China. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the most expensive and exclusive ones were porcelain Chinese imports. Silver, also expensive and prestigious, was not however a practical alternative material for these bowls because of its excellent properties of heat conduction. A silver bowl, with no handles, filled with boiling hot tea was too hot to hold comfortably. (See Brown: 1995 for the history of tea in England; Hayward: 1959 for the brief appearance of silver tea bowls; de Castres: 1977 for other examples of silver tea bowls; Gaimster: 1994 on the availability and consumption of Chinese porcelain in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England).

This small bowl and saucer are a rare survival of an early tea bowl and saucer made of silver. The form of the bowl imitates imported examples of Chinese porcelain, and documentary sources suggest such sets were not uncommon in the late seventeenth century (the Duchess of Lauderdale at Ham House ordered 18 silver teacups in 1672). However, the heat-conducting properties of silver meant such bowls were impractical for hot tea and this, coupled with the gradual increase in porcelain imports, meant that early silver tea bowls were often melted down and refashioned. The arms, identical on bowl and saucer, could belong to the Broughton or the Legge families and the lozenge-shaped shield suggests they belonged to a woman. Despite this, the identity of the person who commissioned the pieces remains elusive.

M.230&A-1930