Hi everyone,

Included in Where am I? Alice in a Mad Tea Party is a beautiful porcelain miniature tea set.
The Red edition features a red flower motif while the Blue edition features a blue flower motif.

Did you know using porcelain for tea parties has been fashionable for over a thousand years? Let’s look at a little history!

In China, elegant porcelain tea cups were being used for tea drinking and social tea parties as early as the Tang Dynasty (618–907) in the Imperial Court and also among aristocrats and other wealthy individuals. Fun fact: There are many famous Chinese poets from this era that mention drinking tea in their poems, usually alongside or outside in nature. China’s history with various production methods of porcelain and also tea production is quite deep, and is the place of origin for both!

Although there are some records of porcelain arriving in Europe via the Silk Road as early as the ninth century, it wasn’t common in Europe until the 16th century. In the 16th century, the Portuguese established direct maritime trade with China and began bringing both tea and porcelain to Europe. Porcelain sold for a high price as Europeans didn’t know how to produce it, so the only way to acquire it was from importing it. In the early 1600s, the Dutch also established trade with China and began bringing tea and porcelain to various countries around the world. For much of the Western world, both tea and porcelain dishes (also known as ‘fine china’) became known around the same time.

In the 1700s, a few European companies figured out how to make porcelain, and at the same time tea parties became rather fashionable for the next 200 years (and perhaps still is). Despite some porcelain being produced in Europe, porcelain from China was still sought after, expensive, and a recognized status symbol.

Fun fact: Anna, the Duchess of Bedford, is credited with creating the concept of “afternoon tea” around 1840. Supposedly, she felt hungry between lunch and dinner and began inviting friends to join her for tea, sandwiches, and cakes around 4 p.m. This practice became a fashionable social event for the upper class.

Buddhist monks brought tea seeds and some knowledge about tea (but no porcelain) from China to Japan during the Tang Dynasty. However, tea stayed among the monks as well as the Japanese Imperial court and remained with them for over 500 years! Instead of porcelain dishes, they used stoneware or earthenware.

During the 1300s and 1400s, tea gatherings gained popularity among samurai and the nobility. These early gatherings were often lavish and focused on guessing the origins of different teas (maybe we should bring this back?).

It wasn’t until the late 1400s/early 1500s that tea became more popular with the regular citizens of Japan, mainly due to two Japanese men, Murata Shuko (1423－1502) and Takeno Joo (1502－1555), who made it more affordable and accessible by introducing a 6x6ft tea hut where one could prepare the tea, and they also shunned expensive Chinese utensils and artwork that had been the social norm at the time, and instead opted for Japanese utensils that were much cheaper. Japan’s tea culture then thrived, completely separate from porcelain which began being produced in Japan sometime during the Edo Period (1603–1868). At that point, porcelain wasn’t necessarily connected to tea in Japan like it was in China or much of Europe since they had tea much longer than they had porcelain.

Rest of the World

Each country around the world has their own unique history around porcelain, tea, and tea parties. For example, tea history in the USA has strong political ties, from the Boston Tea Party to the women's suffrage movement. In Canada, not only English but also French porcelain became extremely popular and used in various social circles. It was normal, for example, for fur traders to drink hot tea while out in harsh conditions (though they most likely wouldn't have had any porcelain to drink the tea with). What do you associate tea and/or porcelain with?

If you'd like to look more into these topics, here are some sources:

Tea culture in Tang Dynasty

Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea

The earliest Chinese ceramics in Europe?

History of Tea in Japan