Slop Bowl c. 1770

This is a slop bowl, made by the Worcester Royal Porcelain Company, and held at the Art Institute of Chicago. Slop bowls were part of the elaborate rituals of tea consumption in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially among the British middle and upper classes. But think for a moment about the less visible aspects of tea: as a commodity connected to global trade networks, it involved the exploitation of labor and resources in colonized lands. The bowl, delicately painted with sprigs of berries, speaks to the feminized domestic sphere of tea drinking. Women were central to these social rituals. Tea parties were spaces where women could exert social influence, yet they also reinforced gendered expectations. This slop bowl, then, represents both an aesthetic object of beauty and a symbol of the complex social, economic, and gendered dynamics of its time. What hidden histories might it hold?