Tea caddy (part of a traveling tea service) 1783 - 1793

This tea caddy, part of a traveling tea service, was made by Dihl et Guérhard, in France, during the late 18th or early 19th century. Tea drinking was extremely popular, but also very expensive in France at this time. It became a social ritual, a way of displaying refinement and elegance within a certain class. This tea caddy would have been part of a set used by wealthy people who wanted to maintain their tea drinking habits even when they were travelling. The decoration on this tea caddy is fairly restrained with simple borders and a single initial. What does the initial ‘B’ refer to? Was it a sign of the owner’s personal identity? The artist’s? These are the sorts of questions that an art historian might ask. We need to remember that an artwork like this is a product of its time and place. To fully understand it, we need to do more research into the social history of tea drinking and the significance of porcelain in French culture at that time.