Object Type
Tea was generally drunk from handle-less tea bowls like this one during the early 18th century, but handled teacups were made in Britain by the 1740s. These were more costly to make than tea bowls, and they didn't pack tightly together for carriage to distant markets. Tea bowls were usually low and wide, probably because the aroma of tea is better appreciated from an open bowl. Satirical prints of the years around 1800 occasionally show tea being drunk from the saucer, but it is clear that this was not done in polite company. Afternoon and after-dinner tea were generally served by the lady of the house in the drawing room in comfortably-off households.
Materials & Making
The Worcester porcelain factory's raw materials included soaprock, which resulted in a type of porcelain that was resistant to the thermal shock of boiling water. Worcester's recipe was therefore suitable for tea and coffee wares. The decoration on these pieces was first printed onto a sheet of paper or animal glue, and the image then transferred onto the glazed surface of the wares. The invention of transfer printing revolutionized ceramic production in Britain. This allowed factories to reproduce high-quality decoration at very little cost per unit once the copper transfer-printing plates had been engraved.
Place of Origin
Worcester, England (made)
Date
1756-1757 (made)
Artist/maker
Hancock, Robert, born 1726 - died 1817 (transfer print, engraver)
Royal Worcester (maker)
Materials and Techniques
Soft-paste porcelain, transfer-printed in red enamel
Dimensions
Height: 4.44 cm
[Bowl] Diameter: 6.98 cm
[Saucer] Diameter: 11.68 cm
Object history note
Transfer-prints engraved by Robert Hancock (born about 1731, died in Brislington, South Gloucestershire, 1817)
Made at the Worcester porcelain factory
Descriptive line
Tea bowl and saucer
Labels and date
British Galleries:
The rural scene illustrated here is taken from a print called 'The Tea Party', first published in London in 1756. The inclusion of the young black page carrying a kettle is significant. There were probably about 20,000 black people in Britain at this time, most of them household servants. [27/03/2003]
Text written about this object for 'Uncomfortable Truths / Traces of the Trade' gallery trails (Trail 2: 'Black servants in British Homes'), 20 February - 31 December 2007. Helen Mears & Janet Browne (with additional interpretation by artist Sonia Boyce).
'TEA BOWL AND SAUCER / The images on this tea bowl and saucer were originally engravings, but they were reproduced on a wide range of ceramic goods using the new technology of transfer printing. They show a fashionably dressed European couple taking tea in a garden, accompanied by a pet dog and a young black servant, who pours hot water from a kettle into a teapot.
The ceramic items on which they appear were intended for the consumption of coffee or tea - which for white British tastes required the addition of West Indies sugar. Together, the objects and image work together to reinforce each other's fashionable and exotic associations.
'It remains a continuing debate in art schools whether art is devalued by a relationship to politics. "Surely, the arts are supposed to levitate our spirits above the everyday?" was often an accusation levied at young black artists like myself during the 1980s. Given the heatedness of this debate, I am amazed by the extent to which British artisans and artists were employed to support the slave trade.
'These fine and decorative objects were meant to epitomise sophistication, cultured behaviour and aestheticism. Yet, how could something so delicate as this tea bowl and saucer - whose purpose now seems so innocent (a nice cup of tea) - delight in, yet hide such a brutal set of social relations?'
Sonia Boyce' [20/02/2007]
Categories
Ceramics; Tea, Coffee & Chocolate wares; Black History
Collection code
CER
