Anyone for Tea and Cake?

 

QUESTION: Ever since I was a little girl having tea parties for myself and my dollies, I’ve loved little cups and saucers. One of my grandmothers gave me a little tea set for my sixth birthday. I loved that set. Soon my tea parties expanded as I invited my girlfriends to bring their dollies over to visit. As I got older, my interests changed until one day while helping my mother clean our attic, I found my original miniature tea set. Since then, I’ve been collecting miniature cups and saucers. I would love to enhance my collection. Can you advise me on how to do that?

ANSWER: What a charming memory. Collecting miniature cups and saucers and even whole tea sets has been a popular pastime for many people. The chief advantage is that because they’re small, they take up less space, making them ideal for those living in condos and apartments.

Children’s tea sets, first produced for the children of the wealthy, seem to have been created before potters discovered the formula for porcelain in Europe. Metalsmiths crafted the earliest ones of pewter or copper, and in some cases gold or silver. Children’s toy tea sets first appeared in 16th-century Germany, a country known for producing toys in wood and metal.

Porcelain children’s tea sets didn’t appear until the 18th century, but just like the silver and gold ones, only the wealthy could afford them. These sets were generally of very high quality, and people kept them for special occasions. Children’s tea sets didn’t become popular household items until the early to mid 19th century, during the Industrial Revolution. The Universal Exhibition of 1855 in London seems to have been the starting point of their expansion. 

In Colonial America, tea was a family event, with everyone enjoying a break during the day. No doubt make-believe tea time and pretend tea drinking were a part of some children’s playtime activities. Perhaps many little girls played at serving tea and dreamed of having a tea parties of their own. The pieces in these sets usually imitated those in regular sets, differing only in size. Though children’s cups and saucers look like traditional tea cups, only a bit smaller than demitasse cups. The handles were small, and not easy for adult hands to hold.  

Collectors love miniature cups and saucers for their variety, in shape, style, and decoration. They can be classified in two distinct styles—dollhouse-size miniatures and toy-size. 

Dollhouse-size miniatures are the smallest—usually scaled an inch to the foot. During the late 18th century, English and continental makers produced dinnerware sets for fashionable ladies to furnish  miniature rooms in large dollhouses. By the 19th century many more companies produced these sets, making them for both children's and adults' dollhouses.

During the Victorian era, wealthy families furnished a nursery for their children. While adults took tea in the parlor, the children had theirs in the nursery. This practice required child-size tea sets. Teacups held three or four ounces, just the right size for three-year- and up. Manufacturers decorated these pieces with animal themes, nursery rhymes, airy .tales, children's activities and the art of famous illustrators

First made n the early 19th century, Staffordshire ABC ware included more than 700 patterns. The alphabet appears on each piece. In the case of a small one, such as a tea cup, which was too small for the entire alphabet to fit, English manufacturers made the letters smaller or used fewer of them. Today, children's size miniatures are the most abundant and reasonably priced. American production of children's ware reached a peak during World War II before the less costly Japanese ware became available.

Mary of Teck, wife of George V of Great Britain, who reigned from 1910 to 1936, was an avid collector of dollhouses and miniatures. Because of her interest, the hobby regained popularity in the 1930s through the 1950s, making early dollhouse-size miniatures rare.

Toy-size miniatures are larger than the dollhouse-size but smaller than child's size. Novice collectors often mistake them for salesman's samples. These toy-size miniatures served several purposes. First, collectors could display them in a cabinet. Second, they taught children of wealthy families manners and social races in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Makers frequently decorated these teacups and saucers with historical scenes and mottoes.

Manufacturers produced these toy-size cups and saucers in the same forms, shapes and styles as the full-sized ones of the period. The potters of Nuremberg, Germany became famous for their miniature tea sets, decorated in vivid colors. Early tea bowls and saucers made by Meissen occasionally come up for sale. The Dutch produced small pottery items decorated in blue and white in the 17th century and introduced them to England in the 1690s. Soon "baby house waresº were part of Staffordshire potteries’ stock.

Companies such as Coalport, Minton, Spode and Worcester produced miniature creamware, stoneware and porcelain cups and saucers in the 19th century. The Dresden studios decorated miniature cups and saucers, often in the popular quatrefoil shape, in the late 19th century.

The most common examples of toy size cups and saucers found in the marketplace today date from the 20th century. In France several companies in the Limoges area produced them around the turn of the 20th century and still make them today. RS Prussia manufactured examples of lovely molded cups with leafy feet and unusual shaped handles around 1900. English potteries, such as Shelley, Crown Staffordshire, Copeland Spode, Wedgwood, Royal Crown Derby, and Coalport miniature tea sets with trays, which were exact replicas of full-size sets. Collectors especially like the Royal Crown Derby pieces, decorated in the Imari patterns. Probably the hottest miniature cup and saucer in the marketplace today are those made by Shelley. The price for a cup and saucer can reach as high as $250 to $300. In the United States, Leneige Company and Gort China made miniature cups and saucers from 1930 to the 1950s.

The creation of early plastics and Bakelite in the late 19th century marked a huge change in children’s tea set design. Manufacturers still made them in porcelain and more durable stoneware, but plastic sets soon began to emerge. By the mid 20th century, plastic sets and sturdy stoneware became the norm. 

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Sleep My Baby

QUESTION: Recently, I purchased an old book on Victorian life at a book sale. As I was leafing through it, I noticed a photo of a bizarre looking little doll. The caption said it was a mourning doll. I never saw anything like this before. What can you tell me about this little doll and what was its purpose?

ANSWER:  During the Victorian Era,  people typically used elaborate physical representations and rituals to mark the death of a loved one. Because people often died at home, family members, usually women, prepared the body of the deceased for buria. The dead body would then be displayed for a time in the parlor. Because of the close proximity of death to the home, and because of high mortality rates for children and infants, children knew about death and dead bodies from a very early age.

In Victorian times, parents and other family members openly discussed death with children. And children's stories often included death scenes and references to death, especially with an emphasis on the joys of heaven and the inevitable reunion with loved ones there.

During the 19th century, especially after the Civil War, death played a major role in everyday life.

By the late 19th century, it became customary to commission a "mourning doll" to lay at the grave of a deceased child. These dolls became a way for families to deal with the death of a child. Along with mourning attire and jewelry, death masks, and post-mortem photography, the mourning doll was just another, if somewhat overlooked, element in the Victorian grieving process.

Considering that many infants died of disfiguring and draining illnesses such as smallpox, scarlet fever, tuberculosis and diphtheria, the mourning doll offered an idealized reality of their loss. While their child may have departed gaunt and bloody, the wax effigy would look as though it had simply closed its eyes and gone to sleep.

Graveside dolls became a way for parents to cope with the death of a child. When a child died, it was traditional for families who could afford it to have a life-sized wax effigy of the child made for the funeral. The doll would often be dressed in the deceased infant or child's own clothing, and most of the deceased child's own hair would be used to make the doll even more realistic. These wax dolls usually show the deceased lying in a coffin-like setting with their eyes closed, to mimic a peaceful sleep.

The backsides of the heads were made flat so that the doll would lay nicely when laid out to rest. Most parents put the mourning doll on display at the wake and would then leave it at the grave site. Some people often kept these effigy dolls after the funeral, placing those of infants in a crib, periodically changing their clothes, and otherwise treating them like a real baby.

To simulate the feel of a real child, the makers stuffed them with sand and heavy cloth to give them a more realistic feel when being held. Sometimes, parents had the doll,  itself, framed. Effigies of older children consisted of just the head and shoulders. All of them had flat backs, so that they could be placed in a picture frame.

Many Victorian girls had some sort of doll. They used them, much as little girls do today, to play house and thus practice social interactions. By the late 19th century, people recognized that childhood was a time for play, but that play also came with instruction. Little girls play-acted tea parties and courtships, and learned the expectations and rules of femininity. Of course, family members encouraged them to dote on baby dolls like they were their own, preparing girls to become good wives and mothers. But there was another role that dolls prepared girls for—funerals.

Wax effigies weren’t the only death-related dolls associated with Victorian children. Parents often gave their daughters “Death Kits,” which included a doll and miniature coffin. In play, the child would then practice dressing the doll, laying it out for visitation by placing it in the coffin, and planning a funeral. She might also be expected to practice attending to the grief of the doll’s mourners. When young Victorian women became adults, they would have most likely been asked to care for dead family members.



A kit would include a doll with black mourning clothes and a doll-sized coffin. Just as in real life, the little girl would prepare the doll for a wake and funeral, displaying it for mourners near the body of the dead child. Sometimes the effigy would be a full bodied doll, its body weighted with sand so as to feel more realistic, and with a flat back so as to lie down nicely in something like a tiny coffin. Dolls of older children might just be a head and shoulders, with the back of the head and torso flattened so it could be framed.

After the funeral the doll would either be left at the child’s grave or kept in the home, perhaps displayed in a glass coffin. Often cared for much like a real child, the mourning doll might be placed in a bed or crib and have its clothes regularly changed. Occasionally, parents would have a full-sized effigy made of their dead child to place in their bedroom.

Although many of these dolls didn’t survive the years, those that did were usually lovingly kept by the parents, often displayed in the bed of the deceased and cared for and re-dressed as though they were the deceased. Those that remain today were preserved in large glass boxes and, typically, depict a child between birth and three years.

Wax mourning dolls lost their popularity as tastes changed and the First World War began in the early 20th century. This is another one of those bizarre Victorian customs that has faded into history.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Article section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the other 18,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about western antiques in the special 2019 Spring Edition, "Down to the Sea in Ships," online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques & More Collection on Facebook.