Tea-table [ Furniture & Interior decoration / Rituals & Ceremonies / Eating & Drinking ]
… of tea drinking was a polite and sociable encounter staged around the tea-table. In media representations (visual culture, poetry, essays) the term ‘tea-table’ increasingly served as a synecdoche for the sociable assembly. As an idea, … the tea-table as the equal, and most innovative, of the other significant institutions that characterized public culture in the period, such as coffeehouses and clubs. Accordingly Addison says: ‘ I would therefore in a very particular … and public in its discursive agenda was a distinctive and innovative gesture. The association with the domestic culture of women, however, also meant that this conversation and debate were repeatedly scapegoated as ephemeral, vulgar, …
Conversation | Domesticity | Exoticism | Furniture | Gossip | Politeness | Public sphere | Tea | Tea-table
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