Tea-table [ Furniture & Interior decoration / Rituals & Ceremonies / Eating & Drinking ]
… say, it is at once an item of furniture, a gathering at which tea is consumed, and a hybrid form of polite heterosocial sociability that occupies a liminal zone between public and private spheres. Each of these aspects is closely embedded in the discourse of sociability as it was practised and understood in the British Enlightenment. The context for tea-table sociability is the emergence of the consumption of tea, the hot infusion of the oxidized and prepared leaves of Camellia …
Conversation | Domesticity | Exoticism | Furniture | Gossip | Politeness | Public sphere | Tea | Tea-table
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