variety. The Dutch began copying the Ming ceramics and, by the middle of the century, the famous blue-and-white Delft potteries produced credible imitations of the Eastern originals in the chinoiserie style that was later to become popular in Europe.
From the end of the seventeenth century, both coffee and tea services began to assume their modern forms. The first English silver teapot, with a nearly conical shape, was made in 1670. Between 1650 and 1700, the broad flat Chinese bowls were more and more frequently placed on saucers. However, the practice of pouring the coffee from the bowl into the saucer persisted even after handles had been devised for the bowls. This upside-down way of drinking remained customary until the end of the eighteenth century, when drinking from the saucer became socially frowned upon.
Man and Child Drinking Tea, artist unknown, c. 1725. This painting is sometimes called Tea Party in the Time of George I. The silver equipage includes a silver container and cover, a hexagonal tea canister, a hot water jug or milk jug, slop bowl, teapot, and sugar tongs. The cups and saucers are Chinese export porcelain, which was in good supply in the colonies as well as throughout Europe. (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)
It was also in the eighteenth century that the Germans became adept at designing and producing fine porcelain teapots. By the century’s close, the full development and importance of the modern equipage in Germany is evident in the words of Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), the Romantic German painter of spiritual, desolate, and brooding landscapes, in a letter to his family, dated January 28, 1818: “Coffee drum, coffee grinder, coffee siphon, coffee sack, coffee pot, coffee cup have become necessaries; everything, everything has become necessary.” 25 By the Biedermeier period (c. 1815–48) in Germany and Austria coffee and tea machines and the accompanying porcelain equipage became widely recognized status symbols. Paintings from the period illustrate that the social rank of a family might be accurately estimated from the deliberate display of the items necessary to take morning coffee or tea.
7
judgements of history
Medical Men Debate Caffeine
We advise tea for the whole nation and for every nation. We advise men and women to drink tea daily; hour by hour if possible; beginning with ten cups a day, and increasing the dose to the utmost quantity that the stomach can contain and the kidneys eliminate.
—Dr. Cornelius Buntekuh, Medizinischen Elementarlehre, Dutch physician in the pay of the Dutch East India Company, c. 1680
Caffeine itself was not known until Goethe exhorted Runge to determine the chemical constituents of coffee beans and was not isolated from tea or cacao until some years later. However, the content of the spirited, often vituperative medical debates attending the introduction of coffee, tea, and chocolate proves that the medical men of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw in these drinks a common, if unidentified, agency and that many of what we would today call the pharmacologic and psychoactive properties of caffeine were well recognized long before the drug itself was known. As a result, coffee, tea, and chocolate were frequently addressed together as medicinal products in early European texts. A famous example, widely translated in Europe, was Sylvestre Dufour’s Traitez Nouveaux & curieux Du Café, Du Thé et Du Chocolate, Ouvrage également necessaire aux Medecins, & tous ceux qui aiment leur santé (1685), which means New and Curious Qualities of Coffee, Tea and Chocolate, a Work Equally Necessary for Doctors, & for All Who Value Their Health. As the title illustrates, at the time of Dufour’s book, all three caffeinated drinks were still considered drugs, and their distribution in most countries was limited to apothecaries and physicians. 1 As all three caffeinated drinks became available to the lay public and became popular throughout most
From the end of the seventeenth century, both coffee and tea services began to assume their modern forms. The first English silver teapot, with a nearly conical shape, was made in 1670. Between 1650 and 1700, the broad flat Chinese bowls were more and more frequently placed on saucers. However, the practice of pouring the coffee from the bowl into the saucer persisted even after handles had been devised for the bowls. This upside-down way of drinking remained customary until the end of the eighteenth century, when drinking from the saucer became socially frowned upon.
Man and Child Drinking Tea, artist unknown, c. 1725. This painting is sometimes called Tea Party in the Time of George I. The silver equipage includes a silver container and cover, a hexagonal tea canister, a hot water jug or milk jug, slop bowl, teapot, and sugar tongs. The cups and saucers are Chinese export porcelain, which was in good supply in the colonies as well as throughout Europe. (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)
It was also in the eighteenth century that the Germans became adept at designing and producing fine porcelain teapots. By the century’s close, the full development and importance of the modern equipage in Germany is evident in the words of Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), the Romantic German painter of spiritual, desolate, and brooding landscapes, in a letter to his family, dated January 28, 1818: “Coffee drum, coffee grinder, coffee siphon, coffee sack, coffee pot, coffee cup have become necessaries; everything, everything has become necessary.” 25 By the Biedermeier period (c. 1815–48) in Germany and Austria coffee and tea machines and the accompanying porcelain equipage became widely recognized status symbols. Paintings from the period illustrate that the social rank of a family might be accurately estimated from the deliberate display of the items necessary to take morning coffee or tea.
7
judgements of history
Medical Men Debate Caffeine
We advise tea for the whole nation and for every nation. We advise men and women to drink tea daily; hour by hour if possible; beginning with ten cups a day, and increasing the dose to the utmost quantity that the stomach can contain and the kidneys eliminate.
—Dr. Cornelius Buntekuh, Medizinischen Elementarlehre, Dutch physician in the pay of the Dutch East India Company, c. 1680
Caffeine itself was not known until Goethe exhorted Runge to determine the chemical constituents of coffee beans and was not isolated from tea or cacao until some years later. However, the content of the spirited, often vituperative medical debates attending the introduction of coffee, tea, and chocolate proves that the medical men of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw in these drinks a common, if unidentified, agency and that many of what we would today call the pharmacologic and psychoactive properties of caffeine were well recognized long before the drug itself was known. As a result, coffee, tea, and chocolate were frequently addressed together as medicinal products in early European texts. A famous example, widely translated in Europe, was Sylvestre Dufour’s Traitez Nouveaux & curieux Du Café, Du Thé et Du Chocolate, Ouvrage également necessaire aux Medecins, & tous ceux qui aiment leur santé (1685), which means New and Curious Qualities of Coffee, Tea and Chocolate, a Work Equally Necessary for Doctors, & for All Who Value Their Health. As the title illustrates, at the time of Dufour’s book, all three caffeinated drinks were still considered drugs, and their distribution in most countries was limited to apothecaries and physicians. 1 As all three caffeinated drinks became available to the lay public and became popular throughout most
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