Victorian housewives, even those with only moderate means, could choose from tablewares in a wide variety of bodies and styles. This tea bowl and saucer belong to a type usually described in contemporary advertisements as "for the country trade", or cheaper market, and generally known as "common painted": freehand painted (but not in the meticulous style characteristic of expensive wares). The term also implied work executed on a cheap earthenware or an ironstone-type body (as distinct from porcelain). This example of common-painted wares was produced by the Staffordshire firm of Podmore, Walker & Co. (in business from the mid-1830s to the end of the 1850s) who also made printed earthenware for the Canadian market.
Tea bowls, whose shape was originally derived from Chinese models, were in use in Canadian homes for a much longer period than has commonly been assumed, their existence paralleling the handled tea cup for many years. Tea bowls were still being advertised in the Halifax Evening Recorder in 1869 and the Victoria Daily Standard in 1873. Although some people undoubtedly did pour their tea into the saucer to drink it, this was unnecessary and, indeed, was probably frowned upon in polite circles. A tea bowl could be held in several ways: for example, by taking the footrim between the thumb and second or third finger and steadying the far side of the rim with the index finger.
Courtesy: National Museum of Man, National Museums of Canada (S81-17)
