A sugar bowl formed an essential part of English tea services from the 1700s. Tea began to be imported into Britain from the middle of the 17th century but remained a luxury item until import duties were abolished in 1784. English tea drinkers differed from their Chinese counterparts by preferring to drink tea hot with milk and sugar, the latter becoming increasingly available through West Indies sugar plantations which relied on the exploited labour of enslaved African people.

‘The Tea Party’ engraving by Robert Hancock, which appears on this sugar bowl, is one of the most popular designs to have been used on 18th century English ceramics. It shows a couple drinking tea in a garden, often attended by a young black male servant who holds a kettle of hot water. A scene of a ‘Maid and Page’ on the side of the bowl shows a black boy carrying a kettle. Given that sugar was one of the main products of slavery, this image becomes yet another way in which the black body is exploited, bought and sold by 18th century elite people. As James Walvin has noted, almost one million Africans were landed in In Jamaica (though many were promptly shipped elsewhere; some 485,000 went to the tiny island of Barbados) to be involved in sugar production. In fact, a shocking 75% of all enslaved Africans crossing the Atlantic were destined, at least at the beginning, to work in sugar.