Found at a silver market outside of London, this Antique Silverplate Afternoon Tea Cutlery Service brings together all the serving niceties needed for afternoon tea at home. Created in sweet style with an artful attention to detail, this lovely set in its original presentation box includes 6 diminutive teaspoons, sugar tongs and a tea sieve for straining brewed loose leaf tea from the teapot into the cup. 

Created by talented artisans as a self-contained set for serving afternoon tea to the immediate family at home or entertaining one's closest confidantes, each piece is adorned in a cheerful pattern that promises to elevate any setting. Still fitting snugly within the soft velveteen of its striking presentation case, these smart and sparkling pieces will graciously ensure your afternoon tea is fit for a Queen!

Strictly one-of-a-kind and subject to prior sale. In very good antique condition. Box measures 7.5"W x 8.5"D x 1.5"H, Spoons measure 5"L, Tongs measure 4.25"L x 1.5"W, Sieve strainer measures 6"L x 2"W.

Learn More About Afternoon Tea

It’s the seventh Duchess of Bedford, Anna Maria Russell, who we have to thank for the invention of afternoon tea, sometime around 1840. Due to increasing urbanisation and the rise in industrialisation (including the spread of gas lighting in England), the evening meal was becoming later and later. Whereas in rural farming communities the day had an early start and finished when the sun went down, wealthier classes, unhindered by such practicalities, were now having dinner closer to 9pm – with lunch many hours earlier at midday.

The Duchess of Bedford, who was one of Queen Victoria’s ladies-in-waiting, was having none of it. Describing a ‘sinking feeling’ at about 5pm, she became despondent at the void between lunch and dinner. She requested that some tea, bread and butter and cake was brought to her room in the late afternoon – and with that one request of a lady’s grumbling stomach, an afternoon ritual was born. Needing very little prompting to find an occasion to squeeze in another cup of tea and a piece of cake, the upper classes ate it up and the custom soon spread across Britain. Before long all of fashionable society was sipping tea and nibbling sandwiches in the middle of the afternoon.

Traditionally, the upper classes would serve an afternoon or "low" tea around four o'clock, just before the fashionable promenade in Hyde Park. The middle and lower classes would have a more substantial "high" tea later in the day, at five or six o'clock, in place of a late dinner. The names high or low derive from the height of the tables on which the meals are served, high tea being served at the dinner table and low tea being served in the drawing room or parlor with comfortable arm chairs and smaller (lower) side tables. 

*History of Afternoon Tea adapted from "The tea-rific history of Victorian afternoon tea" courtesy of The British Museum blog.