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Moulton Tea Service, featuring Sugar dish, teapot, and creamer.
Made by Ebenezer Moulton, c. 1800-1810.
Gift of Annie Sprague Weston in memory of
Frederick William Paine, 1937.52-54. |
I’m sipping from one of my novelty tea mugs as I write this update. Though I drink a hot Earl Grey nearly every morning, I never stopped to think about what I am drinking from (beyond joy at an odd cat mug, of course). At the start of my summer internship here at the Worcester Art Museum, I was assigned to study a silver tea service. I was skeptical at first: how much could I really learn from a teapot?
I began my research by examining the tea set, because the markings and physical appearance of an object can tell as much about it as written notes or the historical record. This silver tea service has three pieces: a teapot, a sugar dish, and a creamer. All three have squared handles, engraved decorations, and the initials “JW” inscribed in an oval medallion on one side.
I continued by researching texts, starting with newspapers, old exhibition catalogs, and several books on the general topics of tea and silver. Looking at secondary sources, including
Sweetness and Power by Sidney Mintz and
Empire of Tea by Markman Ellis, I began to understand the context of this tea set. The pineapple-shaped finial at the top of the teapot alludes to the fact that the tea and sugar served with the set, like the pineapple fruit, were imported. Merchants brought in sugar from the Caribbean, where enslaved and indentured workers cultivated and processed the raw sugar cane. Wealthy patrons purchased sugar in large solid cone-shaped blocks; servants would cut pieces with special scissors, called sugar nippers, to fill the sugar bowl for serving. Tea imported from China was an extremely expensive commodity; despite how common it is today, it didn’t become popular in the United States until the mid-eighteenth century.
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Ebenezer Moulton, Sugar Bowl, c. 1800-1810. Gift of
Annie Sprague Weston in memory of
Frederick William Paine, 1937.52 |
I was most curious about the people who had purchased the tea service. Why did they buy it? How did they use it? Who purchased it, and for whom? I dug into the museum’s curatorial files, searched for receipts from the artist, and scrutinized old estate files for any mention of this tea set. When the service was given to the museum in 1937, the owner attributed it to her grandmother, Judith Weston, whose initials “JW” might be those marked on the set. Without receipts or specific documentation for the service, it’s not possible to confirm absolutely that Judith Weston was the original owner. There is little information about Judith at all: she lived in Duxbury, Massachusetts, married Gershom Weston of a shipbuilding family, and had several children. Silver was often a marriage gift, so it is possible that Gershom ordered this service when he and Judith were married in 1820, although it was made at least ten years earlier.
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An example of a tea caddy, complete with a lock, for
storing loose tea leaves. American, c. 1800, Bequest
of Stephen Salisbury, 1907.152 |
Whether this tea set belonged to Judith or to a different woman in the Weston family, it was likely used for hosting company. In a wealthy household, serving tea was one of the few tasks a high-class woman might perform in front of guests. Women executed every step of serving tea with the utmost care, from opening the tea caddy to take out leaves, to pouring the water at the right temperature, to choosing to use sugar or not depending on the type of tea (yes for black tea, no for green). As I drink my own sweetened green tea in a ceramic coliseum-shaped mug, it’s hard to imagine this kind of ceremony. But the tea and sugar served in this set would have been as much a luxury as the silver itself, and making a show of serving it like this was a way to display the owner’s affluence and sophistication.
When I first set off to study the Moulton service, I had no idea how extensive and complicated a story it could tell. It has made me look closer at other silver and furniture pieces in the museum to imagine what stories they might carry as well.
Toni Armstrong
Luce Curatorial Intern for Museum Diversity
American Art Department
September 10, 2019
