The Teapot as a Mediator of Inter-female Relationships

In 19th century New York City, tea (and the accoutrement used to drink it), was an essential part of the domestic space, and women’s ability to define their power within the social landscape (to read more about this, investigate the Teapot page).  However, this practice may have looked and functioned much differently for black women than it did for white women, something that would be reflected in Seneca Village. As well, rather than being a method purely of competition with other women, as has often been asserted in previous scholarship, the use of lavish or ornate teaware was a means for a woman to strengthen bonds with her compatriots.  Though a piece of fine ceramics could also be used to communicate status, the ritual of tea drinking and bringing out one’s finest china to honor a guest, was important for their ability to cement inter-female bonds that ultimately brought strength and power to each woman involved.

Consumption of Ceramics

Fig. 1 At the heart of the homespace, a woman serves tea to her family while a maid brings a letter and her children play nearby.1

African American women’s consumption of ceramics most likely looked very different from their white counterparts, due to the distinct experience black women encountered in New York City, their ability to consume the same wares, and the landscape into which those women were bringing the wares.  For one, the method of acquiring ceramic goods may have differed in that it was not uncommon for black women to collect their ceramic wares from outside the general marketplace, such as passing down objects across generations. Despite this, they did not entirely do away with dominant patterns of material use.2 Once within the homespace, the ceramics that were consumed also had distinct standards of use.  Some African American families, for example, may have conformed to the dominant method of reserving a particular set of dishes for special use, and another for every day.3 Though when looking at Seneca Village we may consider: what occasions or visitors would have necessitated the use of the special-use ceramics, and which category the Staffordshire teapot belonged to, if indeed its original owner subscribed to this practice.  As well, we cannot assume that if the owners did subscribe to that practice, the Staffordshire teapot was in the special-use category. These practices for African American families were different than white New Yorkers, with different experiences informing what a ‘special’ occasion was, and indeed, their ability to own more than one set of dishes. As a group that often faced discrimination, black consumers also contended with the narrative of ‘emulation,’ meaning that their consumeristic choices were often disregarded as attempts to copy white consumers.  This idea however, ignores the ways in which ‘lavish’ consumer goods could have had genuine symbolic value to those consuming it regardless of their financial background.4 As scholar Paul R. Mullins notes, 

“It is unlikely that many consumers were sufficiently naïve to believe that their ceramic figurines or Victorian table settings would transform them into aristocrats. Victorian consumption instead makes a very powerful statement about the profound conviction many Americans had in affluence even when they were marginalized by that very society because of classism, patriarchy, racism, xenophobia, regional prejudices, and a host of other ideologies that always curtailed opportunity.”5

The prominence of the ‘emulation’ narrative, fundamentally disregards the agency of marginalized persons who were participating in larger market patterns for their own purposes, and with their own meanings attached.

Domesticity and Marginalization

For black women, being able to own relatively upscale wares would have denoted both their taste, morality, and status (as it did for white New Yorkers), but also their access to materials that allowed those women to practice middle class values. Having access to space and materials to make a homespace gave these women the ability to practice domestic virtue and participate in the cult of domesticity. We might also remember that houses in Seneca Village may not have had a parlor space, but that (unlike in white Middle Class houses) the rooms in those houses may have been less gendered in general.  Thus the house as a whole was related to womanhood and domesticity in a way that was markedly different from white households.6 Relative financial security meant some could stay home to care for children, while those who could not relied on her fellow community members.  However, to black women, part of a marginalized community in New York that was still effected by the legacy of slavery, having access to these things represented a kind of power much different than domestic power white women asserted.  The way black women practiced the cult of domesticity alongside her peers, was similarly informed by their specific experiences as members of a marginalized group. Like her consumption of ceramics, African American women’s ability to consume tea and serve it to her friends was part of her particular experience of performing womanhood and fostering her personal bonds.  For African American women, ideas of domesticity and motherhood carried much different connotations than for white women, especially when connected to the legacy of slavery through which African American women were systematically denied their right to care for their homes and children.7 Due to this legacy as well, African American conceptions of family and the home were tied to complex systems of kinship and reciprocity, quite distinct from the white nuclear family.8 Anthropological archaeologist Laurie A. Wilkie makes this point quite clearly in her book, The Archaeology of Mothering, stating,

“The realms of motherhood and domesticity for African-American women were not private spheres, as they were for white women, but instead a part of very public practice… Motherhood was the business of the entire black community, not just individual households. For freed black women, then, motherhood and its associated domestic sphere were things to be done correctly- not just for the sake of children, but also for the good of the race.”9

This system, devised under conditions of slavery, was adapted by free communities. It was a method of sharing resources and domestic work among black women that ultimately led to strong kinship bonds and strengthened the power of the community as a whole.

This system of reciprocity can be examined through the case of Seneca Village. Through this system, black women gained power from their connections to other women, which worked in conjunction with their economic, social, and material well being.10 It seems likely that this was true as well in the case of Seneca Village and that the women in the area around Nancy Moore’s house (which was later home to multiple children) was an area of mutual reciprocity and shared domesticity.  We can thus imagine the way domesticity may have been performed in Seneca Village, through the lens of the Staffordshire teapot. We may imagine that, in a similar way as a white woman, a Seneca Village resident such as Matilda Phillips would invite her friends to share a cup of tea, bringing out her Staffordshire teapot, so that she and the women of her neighborhood could share news, give or receive advice, or relax in the homespace.  In such a situation, we might view the teapot as a familiar and comforting object that cements the space as one of relaxation and conviviality. Likewise, we may also view the teapot as a ware brought out in a daily setting when among familiar friends. Conversely, we may also imagine a situation in which this teapot is reserved only for special guests, and that when friends came to visit the hostess would serve with different china. Indeed, there may have been a combination of factors that informed a woman’s choice of what wares to serve her guests with, an occurrence happening among white women as well. In a rather humorous tale published by the Lady’s Book and Magazine in 1856, a woman called Kate Wilder relates a personal tale of hosting a tea at which her friends and one esteemed guest, Mrs. Clinton, will be present.  Seeing her own china as inadequate compared to that of Mrs. Clinton, she goes to her china cabinet to inspect her ceramics and accidentally chips her teapot, after which she borrows a teapot from a neighbor. In speaking of her anxieties over hosting Mrs. Clinton with her china, Kate Wilder remarks,

“All the rest of my expected company were, as far as circumstances were concerned, on about my own level, and intimate friends. With them as my guests, I would have been altogether at ease, and had a ‘good time of it.’” 11

Though it turns out her fears are unfounded. Mrs. Clinton ends up enjoying the visit, and professes her admiration for Kate’s teaware despite its simpler quality. It is Kate Wilder’s ability to act as a good hostess with the wares she has that makes her tea successful.

Fig. 2 A woman serves tea while her family gathers around her. Another woman carries the youngest child.12

Fig. 3 Four women gather to have tea. They chat while the teapot sits on the table at the center of their group.13

Fig. 4 A woman teaches her daughter to sew in their home. Between them, a table is set for tea.14

The Kettle Fosters Community

As we can imagine the women of Seneca Village doing, Kate Wilder uses her ceramics in ways that signal her bonds with the women around her. As well, she is familiar enough with her friends’ and neighbors’ teaware to know whose ceramics to borrow, what her wares look like in relation, and what materials she should use to appropriately connect with her visitors. We may also recognize the system of reciprocity (of borrowing and sharing materials) that was also surely present for African American women, though is may have manifested differently, informed by their cultural backgrounds. This system of reciprocity would also be informed by the specifics of those relationships; Kate Wilder and her neighbor are apparently not close, and her neighbor only lends the teapot grudgingly.15 Given that, for African American women, this system of reciprocity was borne out of the legacy of slavery and contained numerous additional connotations of extended kinship, it is possibly neighborly bonds in Seneca Village were warmer.  In either case however, the teapot is reflective of its owner’s bonds with the women in her neighborhood. Both her ability to serve her friends with a relatively lavish teapot or her ability to maintain the teapot as a ‘special-use’ ware, speaks to the owner’s relative levels of access to perform domesticity through her wares, and use those wares to bolster inter-female relationships that were already in place.  Therefore, we must firmly ground our analysis of the Staffordshire teapot within the context of Seneca Village, and the performance of womanhood as it related specifically to African American women in 19th century New York. To equate these performances of womanhood with those of white women would be to disregard the agency of African American women in creating their own communities, cultures, and practices, and the way they used material objects to do this.

  1. Thomas Fogarty, “Maid bringing card to people having tea; two children on the floor playing,” pen and ink, Cabinet of American Illustration, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C., 1890-1938.
  2. Paul R. Mullins, Race and Affluence: An Archaeology of African America and Consumer Culture (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 1999), 147-148, 152.
  3. Ibid. 153
  4. Paul R. Mullins, “Racializing the Parlor: Race and Victorian Bric-a-Brac Consumption,” in Race and the Archaeology of Identity, ed. Charles E. Orser Jr.,  (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2001), 175.
  5. Ibid. 175
  6. Laurie A. Wilkie, The Archaeology of Mothering: An African-American Midwife’s Tale (New York: Routledge, 2003), 83.
  7. Ibid. 82.
  8. Karen Anderson, Changing Woman: A History of Racial Ethnic Women In Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 161-162.
  9. Wilkie, The Archaeology of Mothering: An African-American Midwife’s Tale, 80.
  10. Anderson, Changing Woman: A History of Racial Ethnic Women In Modern America, 161-162.
  11. Kate Wilder, “The Borrowed Teapot,”  Lady’s Book and Magazine 53 (August 1856): 148.
  12. Eliza Leslie and John Sartain (engraver), “The Happy Family,” mezzotint, Published January 1843, Miss Leslie’s Magazine, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C., 1843.
  13. Thomas Fogarty, “Four ladies having tea,” pen and ink, Cabinet of American Illustration, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C., 1890-1938.
  14. “Waiting for Papa,” chromolithograph, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C., c. 1876.
  15. Wilder, “The Borrowed Teapot,” 148-149.