The serving of the fashionable hot drinks tea, coffee and chocolate was often the focal point of domestic social rituals in the eighteenth-century. Porcelain tea and coffee sets with matching trays (déjeuners) were made for one or two persons to serve themselves in private apartments. The design and elaboration of the decoration of the sets signalled their owner’s taste and wealth.

Tea and coffee were not served together at the same time, so the same saucers were often used with both tea and coffee cups. The design of tea cups evolved as the eighteenth century progressed, but tea cups were generally lower and more open in shape than coffee cups. However, it is clear from the records at Sèvres that in France at least certain shapes could be used interchangeably for coffee or tea.

This is one of a small number of tea and coffee sets very finely decorated with scenes from Goethe's hugely successful novel The Sorrows of Young Werther first published in 1774. It was made at the Meissen porcelain factory in 1789. All the known services have the same vessel shapes, and certain of the components are painted with the same subjects and scenes. Some of this decoration is after preliminary design drawings by Johann David Schubert (1761-1822), who worked as teacher of drawing at the factory's drawing school from 1786 and who became principal painter at the factory in 1795, and some of Schubert's designs were in turn copied from prints.