Furniture Suited for Exotic Drinks

With two rare tea table-top trays from Store Kongensgade Faience Factory, we shed light on a time when coffee, tea and hot chocolate became fashionable among the European upper class and partially replaced a well-developed culture of alcohol consumption.

 

The auction’s two table-top trays come from one of the period’s leading faience factories, Store Kongensgade in Copenhagen, where they were both made between 1726-1748 while Johan Pfau was the leading manager at the factory. The tea table-top trays are both decorated in underglaze blue, and the motif on one of the trays depicts two gentlemen placed in a landscape with ruins and a city in the background. The other table-top tray has belonged to the Dutch Von der Nath family, who during the 1600s settle in Slesvig-Holsteen-Gottorp and became prominent members of the community under the reign of Frederik IV. The table-top tray is decorated with the family’s Coat of Arms surrounded by borders, flowers and ornaments.

 

New Exotic Drinks

The table-top trays made of faience emerged during the 1700s, where it became very fashionable to drink warm exotic drinks. In the late 1700s and early 1800s Denmark experienced a period of flourishing trade with distant lands, and from the Orient coffee was imported in great quantities. The same was true about tea from Asia and cocoa beans from South and Central America. These drinks were at the time a costly commodity and therefore reserved for the well-off in society.

 

Across the Warm Vapours

The consumption of both coffee, tea and hot chocolate were considered a civilized custom and the Norwegian-Danish author from the 1700s Ludvig Holberg wrote humorously about the advantageous properties of these drinks in one of his famous epistles:

If no other utility of tea and coffee can be found, then at least they have put an end to the drunkenness that has previously prevailed. Now our wives and daughters can make ten visits in an afternoon and return home quite sober!

As Holberg expressed it the coffee, tea and hot chocolate in many cases replaced alcoholic beverages, and more and more coffee- and teahouses opened up in the major European cities. They came to form a natural setting for a growing public social life, where the drinking of the new exotic drinks became a centrepiece. The so-called tearooms actually became women's chance to become part of public spaces - where they could meet and talk with other educated wives or be courted by their chosen one across the warm vapours of the tea.

 

A Place for the Warm Drinks

As the drinks grew in popularity, the need for a piece of furniture on which to place the warm cups, teapots and accompanying service arose. A place for the tea urn was also missing, which with its hot legs and dripping spout could easily ruin an ordinary wooden countertop. The solution came in the shape of the tray tables, with their tea trays of faience that could withstand both heat and water. The furniture was expensive to produce and was considered a showpiece, and it was of course only families at the top of society who could afford to acquire such furniture.

 

Auction: Wednesday, 1 March at 2 pm at Bredgade 33 in Copenhagen

Preview: 23-27 February at the same address 

 

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For further information, please contact:

Ralph Lexner: +45 8818 1161 · rl@bruun-rasmussen.dk

Charlotte Hviid: +45 8818 1162 · chv@bruun-rasmussen.dk