Tea Using the Urn

Hannah and Elias Boudinot IV of Philadelphia probably purchased this sugar urn shortly after it was made. In the Boudinot household, the urn would have been a central component of the family’s tea consumption. At the time, drinking tea was an elaborate pastime, requiring special utensils like this urn for storing refined sugar and silver tongs for serving it. The practice brought together a global array of objects—Chinese tea and porcelain wares, Caribbean sugar, and silver sourced in South America, presented on a Jamaican mahogany tea table.

A lawyer and statesman, Elias served as a delegate and later as president of the Continental Congress. The son of a Philadelphia silversmith, he was the first director of the United States Mint from 1795 to 1805.