A tea-urn kept the water warm. This allowed the hostess to replenish the teapot and refresh the tea leaves. The tea-urn heated by a charcoal burner appeared in the 1760s. It superseded the tea kettle and spirit burner. This was possibly because most available fuels were unpleasant to burn. Sheffield plate tea-urns, like this one, did not appear until 1785.

This tea-urn makes use of a discovery patented by John Wadham in 1774. He discovered how to heat water by flowing it round a tube containing a heated bar of cast iron. This tube could be placed inside a vessel and acted almost as efficiently as an external charcoal burner. The new system made the external burner redundant, which allowed for a more elegant design.

Thomas Boulsover developed Sheffield plate in 1742. The new material consisted of fused bars of silver and copper that were rolled into sheets of laminated metal and worked like silver. The Sheffield plate industry flourished for approximately one hundred years until electroplating superseded it in the 1840s.