We regularly overlook that the British colonies of Colonial America had been as immersed within the tea ritual on a scale equal to that of their English cousins, which helped spur the 1773 Boston Tea Celebration. Consequently, tea tables had been essential furnishings within the high-quality houses situated in main port cities. As European furnishings makers immigrated to the colonies, they arrange outlets in Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and Charleston, the place they crafted and bought copies of British and Chinese language tea tables to distinguished households.
I used to be reminded of that booming trade throughout a current go to to Colonial Williamsburg. I used to be there to go to the George Wythe Home and later peruse the myriad tea issues discovered within the DeWitt Wallace Ornamental Arts Museum on the historic district’s edge.
My spouse and I just lately bought a house in Kentucky modeled after the Wythe Home. Maybe essentially the most good-looking brick dwelling in Williamsburg, the two-story residence is believed to have been designed within the mid-1750s by George Wythe’s father-in-law, Richard Taliaferro.
George Wythe mentored each Thomas Jefferson and Henry Clay within the examine of legislation. In 1779, he joined the School of William & Mary to turn into the primary legislation professor in the USA. Normal George Washington made the Wythe Home his headquarters throughout the Battle of Yorktown. So, sure, the Wythe Home proudly proclaims, “Washington slept right here.”
A go to to Williamsburg’s DeWitt Wallace Ornamental Arts Museum needs to be on each tea lover’s to-do checklist. Their intensive displays embody numerous tea artifacts that can fascinate you for hours. Two vital tea tables are of their assortment.
A few of the first American-made tea tables had been easy wood trays on stands. Later variations—equivalent to a 1750 Massachusetts tea desk—had been made with fastened tops and high-molded edges modeled after an earlier tray kind. The tapered molding across the edge helped include the fragile ceramics used whereas serving tea. Chinese language tea tables impressed the cabriole legs.
The desk initially belonged to Daniel Shute, the primary minister of the South Hingham Massachusetts Church and delegate to the 1780 Massachusetts constitutional conference that ratified the federal Structure. I can think about the pastor’s household gathering round this desk on December 17, 1773, discussing the rebellious actions that occurred the prior night in Boston Harbor.
Till 1720, rectangular tea tables had been the commonest, however spherical tables with tilting tops later grew to become fash- ionable. The hinged prime was designed to retailer the desk in a nook when it was not in use. As friends arrived for tea, the desk can be dropped at the middle of the room the place the tea issues can be assembled.
This massive tilting tea desk was initially owned by service provider Daniel Barraud (b.1725) of Norfolk and later Smithfield, Virginia. The claw-footed desk is attributed to Norfolk due to its historical past and the similarity of its turned shaft to these discovered on a number of different tables and stands with Norfolk associations. Norfolk supported a big and wholesome cabinetmaking neighborhood by the third quarter of the 1700s.
Lastly, I noticed a baby’s tea set from the colonial period. This miniature tea set included a clipping from a Boston newspaper commercial that appeared two years earlier than The Boston Tea Celebration—“For Sale: A number of full Tea-Desk Units of Kids’s cream-colored Toys. Boston Information-Letter November 28, 1771.” Judging by its pristine situation, I think youngsters by no means used this set.
Contributing editor Bruce Richardson is the Grasp Tea Blender at Elmwood Inn Fantastic Teas and co-author of The New Tea Companion and A Social Historical past of Tea, obtainable at elmwoodinn.com.
