I have enjoyed seeing everyone's tea sets, and reading the stories behind them.

I have a pretty, simple, silver-plate set and several other pieces I keep in the DR hutch with my china, which includes a coffee pot and a tea pot I've never used for serving. The silver pieces were all eBay and flea market finds, but I'd love to have heirloom sterling. I do have a pair of weighted sterling candlesticks I found on eBay. They were advertised as plate, but I suspected they were sterling, so I took a chance. Three years ago I gave my mother a collected silver-plated tea set for Christmas--I gave her the water pitcher another time, with a bouquet of roses arranged in it.

Over several year's time I've collected sets of vintage flatware for myself, and for each of my children. The pattern I gave my son and DIL is 'Grosvenor', which has many matching hollow-ware pieces, so I've collected those as well.

I found this little set at a yard sale last summer, for $1.00:

It's sitting on a thrifted charger(?), beside a 16oz. water bottle, for scale. All my other pieces are badly in need of polishing.

Mama Goose, that is a great find. Most of my silver is antique store, family pieces, or eBay.

Bpathome, when serving tea to a crowd, one first brews really, really strong, concentrated tea and that goes in the teapot. Then hot water is kept in another serving piece that can be kept warmer. You add concentrated tea to the cup, then fill with hot water from the other pot. It's easier to replenish hot water than brew more tea, and the concentrated stuff can be made well ahead of time. Of course, now with insulated carafes and specialty teas, the process is different. The last time I was at a tea, we were offered our choice of lovely teas in cloth bags from a silver basket, then hot water was poured into our cups and we brewed our own. The emphasis was on the tea itself, whereas in the past the tea was just a beverage :-)

Thanks, Kwsl! My DFIL would brew their nightly tea that way: heat the pot with hot water, pour it out. Add the tea and a little water from the kettle to make the concentrate, then more water from the kettle to make the pot. It was good!

I see you are already familiar with the process :-)

A restaurant we love in Florida used the same principle with coffee. They imported liquid, concentrated coffee from Germany (the owners were German) and just mixed it with hot water in pots. It was absolutely delicious, and when I once asked them what type of coffee they used they told me about the concentrate. I was very surprised---and of course that was years before the whole starbucks coffee thing.

tishtoshnm,

There is an excellent possibility that you are not missing the lid for the sugar bowl. Rather, that bowl may be a waste bowl and never came with a lid in the first place. It's meant to receive tea leaves and water when you warm the cups. Not all sets came with a waste bowl. And, not all sets came with a creamer and sugar. So, you may not be missing anything.

Well, the English pretty much dragged everything they loved and held dear with them, wherever they went. Which, very much, included the proper silver tea service.

Course, they brought all manner of British things with them, they wanted their luxuries no matter where they were! At war or even on the battlefield!

Campaign furniture style anyone?

Beautiful set and looks right at home on your dining room table.

Love it!!!!

Oh, that IS lovely in person. Is this your everyday dining area? What do you do with the set a mealtime, leave it there? Or set it aside?

We usually eat at the island in the kitchen, just to the left of the dining space. Will just move the tea set to the coffee table when we need to use the dining table. It looks good there too. :-)

I almost hate to admit that the most use the dining table gets is when DH folds laundry there! For some reason, that's his favorite place to do that.

That is a lovely set! I especially like the soft squareness of the tops-different then most. I also think it looks great on your dining room table.

It is a lovely service and you will get as much pleasure looking at it as using it!

The Golden Cove is a wonderful choice--very Art Deco, with similarly flowing lines. I have to smile at the image of your DH folding laundry next to the fancy silver tea set. ;)

Love these sets. Jen, you will have a great time using your service for tea. My daughters-in-law love going to tea. We have gone to the Brown Palace in Denver multiple times and have had tea at our individual homes as well. My three buddies and I also get together for tea frequently.

Something about the elegance and serene quality of tea time is very special. We all love baking tea treats and each has her own specialty to share. It is such a girly time and it is great fun!

Diane

It's so pretty Jen! I like the subtle difference of the teapot, as well as the sugar bowl being slightly squareish, yet the feet tie the set together. All these rainy days are perfect for tea! ;)

Nice!

It looks smashing on the dining table, and for some reason does not at all look odd with the native Indian pieces. What an elegant addition to your home.

Thanks so much, kind folks! :-)

Ingrid, I don't think it looks odd with the N.A. pieces either; in fact, the combination reminds me of places I've visited in Santa Fe that were a lovely mix of English or continental pieces with tribal art. Of course, my take on the look is not nearly as sophisticated as a place such as this (La Fonda Santa Fe), but I draw a tremendous amount of inspiration from photos like this one.

it's beautiful, and looks great on your dining room table.

It's even more beautiful than I imagined!

All I want is a proper cup of coffee,
Made in a proper copper coffee pot.
You can believe it or not,
But I want a cup of coffee
In a proper coffee pot.
Tin coffee pots
And iron coffee pots,
They’re no use to me.
If i can’t have a proper cup of coffee
In a proper copper coffee pot,
I’ll have a cup of tea.

Love that, Sue!

And then there's this ... Pretty opinionated, no? ;-)

George Orwell on tea

Such lovely tea services, everyone.

If you don't already know, best way to polish heavily chased silver:

http://betsyspeert.blogspot.com/2012/12/betsys-science-experiment.html

Very lovely lines on your tea set Jen!

Suero, love that song!

Love seeing all the beautiful pieces!

I am m from India and have a few dozen pure silver pieces from both my family and my husband's family like plates, bowls, cups, lamps, "tumblers," and many other pieces whose shapes and functions may not be familiar to people from other cultures -- a huge piece rarely used these days whose function is essentially that of a thermos, with two tumblers that fit inside and a threaded lid that closes tight over the main piece; a baby rattle; a sippy cup for toddlers; a piece whose function in the old days used to be to administer liquid medicine to babies; and numerous others that I cannot describe meaningfully. Most of them are in the top two shelves of a china cabinet. Others are packed away. Most of these pieces were used regularly in both households. As the youngest in the family, I was the last one to use the sippy cup, rattle, child's dinner plate, etc. My mother died when I was ten and my father died 20 years ago. The pieces from my family take me back to my childhood. My MIL and my FIL, who were a second set of parents to me, died in the last 4 years and I cherish the pieces from them. I'm quite the sentimental type and have preserved everything I have received from them, regardless of their value. They're all crowded and you can't see the individual pieces sufficiently clearly to make out their shape or function, but here are some pics I just took today.

Writersblock, using that method to remove tarnish will also remove any patina which makes old silver so beautiful. I would never use it on my sterling pieces or flatware-it ends up looking more like stainless than silver!

As fori and cyn427 mentioned, if you have vintage silver or silverplate, and you want to keep it's patina, please don't use the baking soda and aluminum foil method. The silverplate in the betsyspeert link appears to be Deauville, a lovely Art Deco pattern (of which I have a few pieces, and which would look great with TR's Golden Cove china, BTW), but even though the cleaned pieces in the pictures are gleaming, the beautiful patina has been completely stripped from the design. Most designs were purposely 'tarnished' during manufacture, so that the designs have depth, but the chemical reaction that takes place with the baking soda bath removes the good tarnish along with the bad. Polishing with a cloth removes the surface tarnish, but leaves the tarnish in the grooves of the designs, making them stand out. What Deauville should look like.

Also, never use rubber bands, plastic wrap, or chlorine bleach on silver. Rubber bands can stain or corrode the silver, eventually completely removing the plating wherever they contact the silver. Plastic wrap can stain the silver, and over time can adhere to it, making removal very difficult. Chlorine bleach can dissolve silverplate, and make both plating and sterling look white and flat, or 'sick.'

Tips on safe cleaning and storing of silver.

Another source on cleaning and storing silver.

This concludes my silver PSA. ;)

Nutsaboutplants, what a glorious collection; I hope you will continue to use them!

I just added a little springtime to my set with a couple of new bunnies. They are just resin or something painted silver, but I thought they're cute. The back one seems to be the best fit, I may take the front two back.

Jen, if I were you I might start searching CL for a small antique tea cart to put diagonally in the dining room corner as a permanent place for your lovely tea set (not that it doesn't look nice on your table but it's special enough to warrant its own 'home').

Yes, if you want to keep patina you shouldn't use the tinfoil cleaning method, but it sure works well for old silver plate that has oxidized to the point where you'd be down to the base metal before you got it looking silvery again with any kind of rubbing polish. Sometimes I've seen pieces so bad that no amount of hand polishing could restore them, and for those it can be worth starting with a clean slate and building up the patina from scratch again.

BTW, we ate with sterling every night, mom always threw it in the DW so it never had any patina at all, but I don't think anyone would ever have mistaken it for stainless. The people who eventually stole it surely weren't deceived.

Thanks Bpathome! Love your bunnies. Unfortunately, I don't use the silver much. When my son was little, I had used some of the baby/toddler things, but that's about it. Using silver plates, bowls, cups and utensils is supposed to have some health benefits. I keep thinking I should use at least the cups, plates and tumblers but our life is not organized enough to take the trouble to do that.

I appreciate all the info on cleaning methods shared here. I intend to go over my set lightly with a cloth every week and hope that will keep it looking nice. There's something quite meditative about giving something a soft polish, I think.

Such gorgeous pieces shared in this thread. And that Deauville? I'm in love.

I love all of these tea sets!

And, TurquoiseRose -- yours looks beautiful on your dining table.

I don't have the standard silver tea set. I had a Moroccan that I bought in the pre-Sahara when my son was four. I gave it to him to keep polished!

I have a white ironstone tea service, though the pot, sugar and creamer are in my china cabinet right now. I've still not unpacked the cups and saucers. When I do, I'll put the grouping on the black sideboard for the contrast.

I mentioned on the china cabinet thread that I've been inspired to polish my hollow-ware and take a picture of the china hutch. My tea set is a Melford pattern--I know the number, but I don't know if it has a name.

With the meat platter and a matching serving bowl partially in the pic:

As it's usually displayed in the hutch, with my Noritake 'Heather' china. The sterling candlesticks are sitting on the table in the foreground:

Oh I was hoping you had updated with your tea set....It looks great on our table.

It would just sit there looking pretty. But isn't that enough? YES

To have something that delights your eye each time you look at it? YES

Yes, I agree about the baking soda method but it does have it's place. I use Weiman Royal Sterling Silver Polish. This allows the patina in the chased areas. My most beloved patter is Gorham Buttercup. When I purchased some fill in pieces they were so heavily polished that the patina was totally erased. I was heartsick and so anxious for them to get heavily tarnished enough to bring back the patina.

I have a sterling baby cup that was so heavily tarnished that Weiman's wasn't making a dent in it. I used the baking soda method and after about half an hour it looked gorgeous.

pretty set, tr!!

i have a set similar to kswl's that was given to us for our wedding, but the tray handle was broken in a move several yrs ago and the pots were ornate and i absolutely hated trying to polish the ornate areas, so they are packed away... i do have a lot of old silver tho and will try the baking soda and aluminum foil trick! sounds great! i like some tarnish on some of it, but some of it just looks bad!

kswl, i never knew that was the purpose of the two pots!! i always thought the larger one was for coffee, but it makes more sense that both would be for tea!

even tho i displayed the set for years, i never used it for actual tea-- for some reason, the thought of having tea sit in the metal pots didn't appeal to me...

I have several sets! Some I even sell

I use Wright's Silver Cream on the silver. I also wear gloves while cleaning.

1800's Victorian Aesthetic Tea Service Silver Plate 5 Pc. James W. Tufts Boston Warranted Quadruple Plate, Silver Plated

Sheridan Silver Plated, Tea Coffee Service

Silver Plated Pumpkin Shape Tea Service by Marlboro, Vintage Canadian Set

Thank you all for the inspiration! Time to finish sorting through the last of the move items and get our tea set back out, where we can enjoy it : )

Do I have a silver tea set? Boy do I ever! Silver plate, not silver, a whole, big box of silver plate, tea set, candlesticks, covered serving dishes, trays, gravy boats, vases, sugar/creamer set, napkin holder, etc..........you name it, I have it! God rest my sainted mother, she had so much of that stuff, as did most of the ladies of her generation. My sisters and I have each chosen one or 2 items to keep for sentimental reasons, but the rest of it, I don't know what to do with it, you can't even give it away. I guess nobody wants to polish silver anymore.

Trudy -- those are beautiful.

Thank you cacocobird

Art Nouveau Georgian Tea Service, Nickel Silver, Coffee Pot, Teapot, Creamer, Lidded Sugar

James Dixon and Sons Sheffield Teapot Beaded-edge Silver Plated Greek Key Motif Coffee Chocolate Pot Circa 1835-1848

Sometime you can pair different sets and textures

Antique Cream and Sugar Victorian Aesthetic Movement by Meriden Britannia Ornate Bright Cut Engraved Quadruple Silver Plate Set Circa 1800's

My parents had an old silver tea set. It was pretty neat. I'm guessing they sold it when they downsized to an apartment late 90's.

I received a gorgeous Grand Baroque by Wallace sterling tea set as an heirloom. I want to display it, however, I am worried of it tarnishing. How do I go about that, while keeping it air tight????

I don't know what you mean about keeping it air tight? I would guess if it's an heirloom piece that it's tarnished and been polished many, many times. Use it, display it and polish it when needed. I think polishing silver is one of the most satisfying domestic tasks. I love the feel of the silver, as well as the look, of course, the smell of the silver polish and the resulting silver sparkling in all its glory...it's just kind of a zen activity to me. So maybe you can learn to love polishing your set when it gets tarnished.

When I was married for the first time 50 years ago, my father's brothers and sisters (I think there were 5-6 still living at that time) gave me a silver tea service. They asked to me choose the one I wanted and I choose Reed & Barton's Winthrop Hand Chased. It is silver plate, not sterling. They were unhappy I got plate - hard to tell them the check needed to be WAY bigger for sterling!

It's lived first on a Victorian chest and then on two different side boards for 50 years. My previous side board, though not as fine as my present one, was a better size for a set that is so large - that tray is HUGE! If I were choosing today, I'd choose antique silver-plate and a more classic, plainer style. But I love it and I love that they gave it to me, so it stays on my small sideboard. Here it is decorated for Thanksgiving a few years ago.

At the moment, it needs polishing - yard man's doing a major silver polish next Sat!