Shallow dishes, such as the one seen in the portrait Susanna Truax, and hemispherical bowls were used as containers for sugar. Often called “sugar dishes” or just “sugars,” they were available in delftware, glass ([fig. 18]), and silver as well as in blue-and-white, burnt, enameled, and penciled china. Some containers were sold with covers, and it has been suggested that the saucer-shaped cover of the hemispherical sugar dish or bowl, fashionable in the first half of the 18th century, also served as a spoon tray. However, in the painting Tea Party in the Time of George I ([fig. 5]) the cover is leaning against the bowl and the spoons are in an oval spoon tray or boat. Another possibility, if the lid was multipurpose, is that it was used as a dish or stand under the teapot to protect the table top. Silver sugar boxes, basins, and plated sugar baskets were other forms used to hold sugar,[[60]] which, in whatever container, was a commodity important to the Americans. As Moreau de St. Méry noted, they “use great quantities in their tea.”[[61]]
Figure 18.—Stiegel-type, cobalt-blue glass sugar dish with cover, made about 1770. (USNM 38922; Smithsonian photo 42133-D.)
Containers for cream or milk may be seen in many of the 18th-century teatime pictures and are found in the advertisements of the period under a variety of names. There were cream pots of glass and pewter and silver ([figs. 19] and [20]), jugs of penciled and burnt china, and in the 1770’s one could obtain “enameled and plain three footed cream jugs” from Mr. Henry William Stiegel’s glass factory at Manheim, Pennsylvania. There were cream pails, urns, and ewers of silver plate, and plated cream basins “gilt inside.”[[62]] Milk pots, used on some tea tables instead of cream containers, were available in silver, pewter, ceramic, and “sprig’d, cut and moulded” glass.[[63]] Although contemporary diarists and observers of American customs seem not to have noticed whether cream was served cold and milk hot, or if tea drinkers were given a choice between cream and milk, the Prince de Broglie’s comment already cited concerning his ability to drink “excellent tea with even better cream” and the predominance of cream over milk containers in 18th-century advertisements would seem to indicate that in this country cream rather than milk was served with tea in the afternoon.
Figure 19.—Silver creamer made by Myer Myers, of New York, about 1750. The fanciful curves of the handle and feet are related to the rococo design of the sugar tongs in [figure 16]. (USNM 383553; Smithsonian photo 45141-F.)
Figure 20.—Silver creamer made by Simeon A. Bayley, of New York, about 1790. The only ornamentation is the engraving of the initials “R M” below the pouring lip. (USNM 383465; Smithsonian photo 45141-E.)
While the Americans, as the Europeans, added cream or milk and sugar to their tea, the use of lemon with the beverage is questionable. Nowhere is there any indication that the citrus fruit was served or used with tea in 18th-century America. Punch seems to have been the drink with which lemons were associated.
Often a medium-sized bowl, usually hemispherical in shape, is to be seen on the tea table, and it is most likely a slop bowl or basin. According to advertisements these bowls and basins were available in silver, pewter, and ceramic.[[64]] Before a teacup was replenished, the remaining tea and dregs were emptied into the slop bowl. Then the cup might be rinsed with hot water and the rinsing water discarded in the bowl. The slop basin may also have been the receptacle for the mote or foreign particles—then inherent in tea but now extracted by mechanical means—that had to be skimmed off the beverage in the cup. In England this was probably done with a small utensil known to present day collectors as a mote spoon or mote skimmer. Although the exact purpose of these spoons remains unsettled, it seems likely that they were used with tea. It has been suggested that the perforated bowl of the spoon was used for skimming foreign particles off the tea in the cup and the tapering spike-end stem to clear the clogged-up strainer of the teapot spout. The almost complete absence of American-made mote spoons suggests that these particular utensils were seldom used here. Possibly the “skimmer” advertised in 1727 with other silver tea pieces was such a spoon.[[65]] No doubt, tea strainers ([fig. 21]) were also used to insure clear tea. The tea dregs might then be discarded in the slop bowl or left in the strainer and the strainer rested on the bowl. However, only a few contemporary American advertisements and inventories have been found which mention tea strainers.[[66]] Punch strainers, though generally larger in size, seem to have doubled as tea strainers in some households. The 1757 inventory of Charles Brockwell of Boston includes a punch strainer which is listed not with the wine glasses and other pieces associated with punch but with the tea items: “1 Small Do. [china] Milk Pot 1 Tea Pot 6 Cups & 3 Saucers & 1 Punch Strainer.”[[67]] Presumably, the strainer had last been used for tea.