In another, more gracious time, the drinking of tea, coffee and hot chocolate was considered a social rite worth its weight in sterling silver.
By the early 1700s, these beverages had spread from aristocratic households to other socioeconomic groups. Anna, Duchess of Bedford, elevated tea to meal status in the 1800s when she found it difficult to make it through the gap between lunch and dinner at 7 by eating tea with cake or buttered bread.
To serve these beverages in style, American upper-class and upper middle class households had silver tea sets, which also could include pots for coffee and hot chocolate.
Several notable examples of those used in the Pittsburgh area are now on display in the Carnegie Museum of Art's "Tarnished: The Decline of Family Formality," through May 14.
"The services are excellent examples of the more formal sets, with the earliest dating from 1814," says Tey Stiteler, communications manager for the Museum of Art.
The exhibition came about when Elisabeth Agro, associate curator of decorative arts, noticed a number of people had recently donated tea sets to the museum and wondered why they were not passing them down in their own families.
"I'm interested not only in that it's beautiful and that it's Gorham, but also what it tells us about society," Agro says. In another time, Agro says, these tea sets gave women the opportunity to gather and speak with each other without risking their reputations. Now, women have many opportunities to exert influence without that risk.
"There are moms who choose not to work outside the home, but they aren't polishing silver; they're playing with their kids -- (or) home schooling," Agro says. All of the sets, with one exception, were donated and are part of the museum's permanent collection. Polished to a high silver gloss, they glow in the lighted glass cases of the Treasure Room off the second floor's Hall of Sculpture.
The exception is an 1831 set made by Gorham Manufacturing Co., one of the country's leading silversmiths. That acquisition includes a "black coffee" or Turkish-style coffeepot noted for its elongated body and spout, along with matching sugar pot and creamer. Its pebbled surface is accented with a finely detailed design that includes swags and flowers. The handles are inset with small bone ivory separators.
The most extravagant set has 13 pieces, including tea, coffee and chocolate pots; tongs and a strainer; a sugar basket; and a waste or slop pot for disposing of used tea leaves. Samuel Kirk manufactured the set, which is decorated with grape clusters, leaves and vines, around 1900. One of the quotations displayed with the exhibit, from Edith Wharton's "The Age of Innocence," mentions "the magnificent tea and coffee service of Baltimore silver," or Samuel Kirk silver.
The earliest set, manufactured around 1814 by American silversmith William Thomson, is an Empire or Federal set with simple lines and plain surfaces accented only with thin bands of oak leaves.
One set comprises pieces that are interesting for their unusual shapes reminiscent of pumpkins. Danish silversmith Georg Jansen Manufactory created the eight-piece service manufactured between 1931 and 1941.
Agro also included the trappings of the contemporary coffee and tea ritual. A French press coffeepot, a glass Boda pot, and the informality of paper Starbucks coffee cups, wooden stirrers and paper packets of sugar and sugar substitutes all give evidence of this rushed, disposable society.
Black marks
One tea set remains tarnished in the Carnegie Museum of Art's silver exhibit.
Elisabeth Agro, assistant curator of decorative arts, who curated the exhibition "Tarnished: The Decline of Formality," left it that way on purpose.
Tarnish consists of deposits of black silver sulfides from airborne pollutants. These deposits can quickly diminish silver's glow, which is probably why folks might have great-grandmother's tea set in a box in the attic and not on display.
"You have to maintain it," says Tay Stiteler, communications manager for Carnegie Museum of Art. "Everybody's busy. They don't have people to polish it for them," nor the time to do it themselves.
For people who want to use that tea set now in storage, Rhonda Wozniak, objects conservator, gives some helpful tips for polishing silver:
For people who don't want to make their own paste, Wright's Silver Cream is "the less aggressive" of commercial polishes, Wozniak says.
"It's better to store silver properly, because you remove silver every time you polish," Wozniak says.
"There is no easy way out," Wozniak says. "You need a lot of patience" to polish silver, as well as time.
-- Sandra Fischione Donovan
