Pewter Teapot 1935 - 1942

Here we see a drawing of a pewter teapot by Karl Joubert, made at an unknown date. As an artifact, the teapot speaks to a particular moment in the social history of domestic life. The cultural status of tea in Europe and America transformed across the 18th and 19th centuries, moving from luxury to common-place item. A pewter teapot like this speaks to the rising mercantile class and to the transformation of private social life. By the mid-19th century, tea drinking was thoroughly embedded in the culture of middle-class respectability, where the rituals of tea drinking were linked to notions of civility, domesticity, and family. Joubert, born in 1855, would have been witness to the cultural significance of tea-drinking, even as new forms of leisure began to develop. The drawing of this commonplace object perhaps reflects an institutional desire to record and document the everyday. We can think of the drawing as an exercise. Through careful observation, the artist finds ways to depict the nuances of the material, documenting the textures and subtle play of light on its surface. As historians, we can look to sources from the period to understand more about the cultural significance of tea drinking and the place of objects like this in shaping social life.