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. A fashionable and social drink, during the 18th century it was prepared in front of guests. English tea drinkers differed from their Chinese counterparts by preferring to drink tea hot and with milk and sugar, the latter becoming increasingly available through West Indies sugar plantations which relied on the labour of African slaves.

‘The Tea Party’ engraving by Robert Hancock, which appears on the saucer, 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 pours hot water from a kettle into a teapot. It became a traditional trope during the eighteenth century for elite classes to use boys and girls from the African diaspora as decorative motifs to further their colonial status and power, such treatment exploited and othered these children and turned them into ornamental and exoticised accessories. Their appearance of this tea bowl and saucer further demonstrates an aestheticised exploitation of black people as tea was produced by enslaved labour for the European market.