This is quite clearly mid-range pottery, simple earthenware of a sort that many quite modest british households were then able to afford. but the owners of this particular set must have had serious social aspirations, because all three pieces have been decorated with a drape of lacy hallmarked silver. the historian celina fox explains that tea-time had become a very smart event: in the 1840s the duchess of bedford introduces the ritual of afternoon tea, because by this time dinner had become so late, seven-thirty to eight o’clock, that it was a bit of a gap for the british tummy between lunchtime and evening. for a while there was a revival of tea-drinking, as a sort of meal for sandwiches and so forth, around four o’clock.