Barbarity in a Teacup?

Punch, Domesticity and Gender in the Eighteenth Century

Author(s): Karen Harvey
Source: Journal of Design History , Autumn, 2008, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Autumn, 2008), pp.
205-221
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Design History Society

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25228589

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 Journal of Design History Vol. 21 No. 3 doi:10.1093/jdh/epn022

Barbarity in a Teacup?
Punch, Domesticity and Gender
in the Eighteenth Century
Karen Harvey

The juxtaposition between refinement and barbarity was a critical one in eighteenth
century England. This essay examines the gendered aspects of this distinction as it was
manifested in the meanings associated with punchbowls, teacups and punch pots. The new
hot drinks of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are now a well-examined subject of
historical research. Work on coffee has emphasized consumption in male-dominated coffee
houses, places which also served as loci for concerns about uncivil behaviour. In contrast,
tea drinking is seen as central to polite domestic sociability, linking women and the home.
Punch and the material culture of punch drinking, however, has been subjected to very little
historical attention. This essay considers eighteenth-century juxtapositions of tea and punch,
exploring therein the distinctions between refinement and barbarity, women and men and
home and outside. The article then examines developments in the material culture of punch
drinking and the appearance of punch pots from mid-century. The article closes with the
argument that these hybrid vessels playfully united masculine homo sociability and feminine
domesticity, at a time when the discourse of domesticity was being consolidated.

Keywords: domesticity?eighteenth century?gender?Great Britain?material culture

Writing in the Connoisseur in 1962, the art historian was key to many of the contemporary discussions of
and critic Bevis Hillier described eighteenth-century 'politeness'.3
punchbowls as a form of folk art: 'Genuine refine The new hot drinks of the seventeenth and eigh
ment in a punch bowl', he wrote, 'is as unthinkable teenth centuries, now a well-examined subject of his
as barbarity in a tea-cup'.1 More recently, a similar torical research, have been thoroughly integrated into
characterization of these objects has been given by this historiographical vision of the polite eighteenth
Sarah Richards, who presents the punchbowl as a tra century. Coffee has attracted a great deal of scholarly
ditional object out of step with the increasingly attention, and the recent publication of two lengthy
refined ceramics of the eighteenth century.2 The jux studies has provided the academy with thorough
taposition between refinement and barbarity was a accounts of the political, cultural, social and economic
critical one in eighteenth-century England, articulated contexts of this drink.4 One common thread of this
in social practices and cultural representations that work on coffee is the emphasis on consumption in
pervaded speech, objects, dress, architecture, word male-dominated coffee houses, places which also
and image. It expressed and reinforced relations of served as loci for concerns about uncivil behaviour.5
power in discussions of different social groups, races Tea has been subjected to similarly thorough studies,
and nations, and infused discussions of men and though in recent works there has arguably been a
women. It was often women who were the exem greater emphasis on the material culture associated
plars of refinement, men the brutes. The power of with the drink.6 Moreover, the characterization
women to smooth the rough edges of men's manners of eighteenth-century tea drinking as central to

? The Author [2008]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Design History Society. All rights reserved. 205

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 Karen Harvey
polite domestic sociability is well established. In early
eighteenth-century England and America, the social
custom of tea drinking in the home indicated fash
ionable gentility.7 In addition, there is now a well
established link between women, femininity and tea.8
In some ways, the material culture of tea serves as a
metonym for eighteenth-century ceramics in general,
studies of which emphasize refinement. New ceramic
goods were both expressive and constitutive of a
civilized society and its refined practices.9 Indeed, the
drawing together of women and the home is paral
leled by a polite characterization of ceramics, and
they converge in the material stuff of tea wares. These
objects have become exemplars of the polite, femi
nine domestic culture of eighteenth-century Britain
and North America, serving as leitmotifs in scholarly
work and at heritage sites.
To match this interest in the new hot drinks, there
is a significant body of work on alcoholic drinks and a
growing interest in associated objects.10 Punch and
the material culture of punch drinking has, however
been subjected to very little historical attention. The
barbarity of punch means it is out of step with a pre
dominantly culturally-inflected field of eighteenth
century studies dominated by the interpretative
concept of'politeness'. Yet, as I will go on to discuss
in this essay, punch was frequently juxtaposed with
tea in the eighteenth century. Given this, and the sig
nificance of tea to an understanding of the cultural
terrain of eighteenth-century Britain, an examination
of punch and its material culture in relation to that of
tea promises to unearth some significant findings.
Here, I will probe the gendered juxtapositions
between tea and punch, refinement and barbarity,
women and men, and home and outside, engaging
with histories of masculinity and women and domes
ticity. Following a discussion of the strong associa
tions between men and punch, women and tea, and
comparisons between them in the first half of the
eighteenth century, I then turn to consider the appear
ance of punch pots from mid-century, exploring the
implications of these for the nature and relationship of
masculine homosociability and feminine domesticity.
I interrogate a range of sources, integrating objects
with written (both 'literary' and 'non-literary') and
visual sources. But the final section necessarily cuts
free from this multi-source analysis. There are no
extant written or visual discussions of punch pots; all
we have are the objects themselves. This section
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necessarily raises questions about the limits of a
'material culture' approach, for here we have a case
where there is no obvious 'culture' to be recon
structed around the material. And yet it is in this final
section that I present evidence for the main chrono
logical argument of the article. Punch pots?their
form, size and decoration?disrupted an earlier dis
tinction between objects for tea and objects for
punch. As punch pots entered the home, so did tra
ditions of manly punch drinking, transforming both
male traditions of homosociability and the tenor of
domesticity.
The barbarity of punch
For historians and contemporaries, punch was and is
a difficult drink to characterize. Available in England
from the 1650s, it combined spirit, fruit, sugar, spices
and water (only the last being 'native' to England)
and could be made to many different recipes. In the
early eighteenth century, it was served from bowls
made from pewter, glass, ceramic and silver into
glasses, usually tumblers. By the middle of the eigh
teenth century, however, ceramics had become the
most common kind of object used for the table and
for food and drink consumption.11 Certainly, extant
punchbowls and documented examples in written
sources suggest that the punchbowl followed this
trend. Ceramics varied widely, and all evidence sug
gests that bowls?as with other ceramic objects for
dining and drinking?were available in both fine and
rough materials. In this way, punchbowls straddled
the divide that had emerged by the eighteenth cen
tury between those more traditional drinks of beer
and wine served in glass, stoneware and the rougher
delftwares, and the new hot drinks of tea, coffee and
chocolate served in porcelain and fine earthenwares.
Objects do not allow us to label punch as a plebeian,
middling or 'elite' drink. Indeed, keeping in mind
the range of possible vessels for serving, the potential
for variance in both the alcoholic strength of blends
and the number of individuals to be served from one
bowl, it is difficult to be precise about cost; cau
tiously, we can describe punch as a mid-range
drink.12
The drink was also consumed at a number of differ
ent kinds of venue. This is also suggestive of the range
of connotations the drink had for contemporaries.
Alehouses served beer and ale and were associated
 Barbarity in a Teacup?

with the poor and common, inns (serving wine and dants came to the Black Boy public house in London
spirits) were the bigger and grander type of establish where they called for 'a small bowl of gin and water,
ment, while taverns (also serving wine) were some and a small bowl of rum and water'.22 Other very
where in between.13 But because it was served at a common inscriptions on bowls?including 'One
range of venues, punch is a difficult drink to plot in bowl more and then', 'Drink fair, don't swear' [1]
this way. There were a Hmited number of so-called and 'Fill this Bowl Landlord'?were almost certainly
'punch houses', although they do not appear to have used in the social environs of public drinking.23 The
possessed a particularly distinctive identity. They motto on another white salt-glazed stoneware bowl
were one of the many types of venue where spirits from Staffordshire, made for Edward Saddler in 1759,
could be purchased, though they were no doubt more suggests a clear separation between the homosocial
upscale than other venues which sold spirits, such as aspect of this world of punch drinking on the one
dram shops, brandy shops or geneva shops selling hand and women on the other: 'Fill up the Bowl/Let
cheap gin. Like inns, taverns and alehouses they also not our Wife us Control'.24
provided meals.14 They were certainly associated with The proceedings of the Old Bailey Criminal Court
copious alcohol, however, as descriptions of the sort in London show that women did drink punch in
of man who would seek to 'get himself Drunk withal these environs, although there are simply many more
his Friends at a Punch-house' attest.15 And yet these references to men. Of course, we need to be cautious
punch houses could prompt somewhat conflicting here about the power of social norms in reporting;
responses. James Ashley, who ran the leading London written evidence might underestimate the numbers
punch house from at least 1731 to 1763, sparked of women who drank punch at these public venues.25
fierce debates over the social and moral danger of It certainly seems likely that women drank punch
punch by reducing the price, yet at the same time the with men at home, where punchbowls were clearly
venue retained a degree of respectability: in the 1730s used. Some objects?especially those in soft-paste
it was used to detain disagreeing Old Bailey juries, porcelain?were very light and fragile, and glass bowls
while in later decades it was the venue for upscale must surely have been used in domestic settings.26
clubs and masonic meetings.16 Objects in such materials would have been quickly
Many establishments offered their own bowls in damaged in busy public places where alcohol was
which to serve the drink.17 There is certainly ample being consumed. The designs on some objects,
archaeological and visual evidence that punchbowls such as refined landscapes and genteel pastoral
were kept in early American taverns.18 For England, scenes, might also suggest domestic use. Certainly,
court records attest to the same. As one deponent tes
tified in the trial of Thomas Hall for theft in May
1753, one 'china punchbowl', worth two shillings,
was reportedly taken 'from off the shelf in the bar' at
the Rose and Crown in London.19 The numerous
bowls with guild, society or company designs also
declare their use in the club, tavern, coffee house or
punch house, where such associations so often met.20
Indeed, a large number of surviving bowls of varying
sizes can assuredly be linked to punch consumption in
these (semi-)public places. The very small and rather
plain but very sturdy pearlware bowls dating from the
1780 or 1790s, painted with the words 'Grog', 'Rum',
'Gin' and 'Gin-punch' on the interior, were relatively
inexpensive and utilitarian items suitable for servings
of individual drinks in public establishments.21 Such
small bowls were certainly used in London public Fig 1. 'Drink Fair Don't Swear' punchbowl, London [?], 1722.
houses during this period: witnesses in a trial for Tin-glazed earthenware, d.12% inches. Courtesy of Winterthur
housebreaking in 1778 testified that the two defen Museum [60.1014].

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 Karen Harvey

the decoration on such objects contrasts with the

merry mottoes, drinking and hunting scenes, insig
nias, boats and battles depicted on those bowls whose
inscriptions tie them to public places or collectives
(such as guilds). Accounts of alleged thefts from
dwellings confirm the use of punchbowls in the
domestic environment by both women and men, and
research using probate inventories suggests that
punchbowls were becoming increasingly common in
the eighteenth-century domestic interior.27 None
theless, a sampling of Old Bailey cases across the
whole extent of the eighteenth century shows that
references to punchbowls in the home are consis
tently outnumbered by those in drinking houses by
roughly three to one.28 Certainly in the first half of
the eighteenth century, and (court records suggest)
possibly throughout, punchbowls were used more in
social spaces outside than within the home.
Given the tie between punch and publicity, it is
perhaps not surprising that punch was generally rep
resented as a drink to share. This was achieved
through the use of a shared bowl, and the cultural
significance of such an object is noteworthy. In the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many ceramic
products were produced for individual use, pandering
to consumers' concerns about the need for personal
hygiene and maintaining a distance from others, while
also allowing people to be sociable. Porcelain table
wares in particular allowed users to negotiate the ten
sion between the two impulses to demarcate Fig 2. Frontispiece, A letter from Capt. Flip to Major Bumbo
individual space and to interact socially with others.29 (London, printed by W. Lloyd, 1738). Courtesy of Beinecke
Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
An alleged decline of the shared bowl for food and
drink has been regarded as one of the markers of
civility, alongside a more widespread and frequent Drinking directly from the bowl could certainly be
use of the fork.30 In important ways, punchbowls did regarded as an indication of one's sunken social and
not conform to these expressions of the civilizing moral state, as in Hogarth's tavern scene in the third
process and individualism. It is not always clear, of plate of'The Rake's Progress' (c. 1733-5) [3]. The
course, precisely how the liquid was obtained from overflowing punch, pouring down the chin of one
the bowl. Most English visual depictions suggest that woman, is just one suggestion of chaos among many
usually drinkers poured with a ladle into a punch cup in the busy print. Chaos?in many different forms?
or glass, though individuals drinking alone must surely was a general risk associated with the open punch
have sometimes drunk direct from the bowl, particu bowl (unlike the narrow or lidded vessels for other
larly when that bowl was small [2]. In North Amer drinks). Indeed, the commonly represented form of
ica, there are several indications that groups passed the punch party?a group of men, engaged in often
the bowl from one person to the next, each drinking raucous and merry sociability?suggested men at var
directly from it. Significantly, though, this practice ious points on a continuum, poised on a precipice
attracted comment from French and English travel above the murky waters of the impolite, or well and
lers.31 It seems that the English harboured some anxi truly submerged in that world of excess. The exem
ety about the dangers of such practices. plary depiction was William Hogarth's painting A

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 Barbarity in a Teacup?

Fig 3. William Hogarth, 'Revelling with Harlots', detail of plate III of A Rake's Progress (1735). Courtesy of Guildhall Library,
Corporation of London.

Midnight Modern Conversation (painted c. 1730-1). The cular table, on which sit a candlestick, a full punch
resonance of this image is indicated not simply by its bowl and stem glasses (one overturned), take their
speedy reproduction as a popular print (in 1733) but turn in singing their part of the catch (or round),
also as decoration on a number of punchbowls32 [4]. which culminates in a humorous line about kissing a
Such images and objects constituted a culture of girl. The merriment so central to these kinds of
punch parties in which men were tied closely as fra encounters forged a lively and fluid occasion, cer
ternal groups exercising considerable cultural licence. tainly underpinned by rules, but not ones of strict eti
The circular composition of the images, reinforced of quette.34
course by the shape and decoration of the bowl, sug
gests that what is important is not an outwardly turned
The refinement of tea
presentation but the internal dynamics of the group.
The dynamism of these sociable and circular gather Historians' discussions of tea drinking in the eigh
ings around a punchbowl is illustrated very clearly in teenth century are infused with words such as 'polite',
the mezzotint engraving 'The Catch Singers' (1775) 'civil' and 'ladylike'. A polite form of domestic socia
[5].33 Three men, huddled tightly around a small cir bility develops, constituted by new practices such as

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 Karen Harvey

*!$$?>

Fig 4. 'Midnight Modern Conversation' punchbowl, Liverpool, 1745-55. Tin-glazed earthenware, d. 10K inches. Courtesy of
Winterthur Museum [84.30].

tea drinking and their associated material culture, in
which women are central and through which they
gain some agency and authority.35
Contrasts between punch and tea were not lost on
contemporaries. Indeed, juxtapositions of tea and
punch provided a locus for the discussion of some of
the key concepts already mentioned?refinement,
barbarity, civility, sharing, publicity and domesticity.
In a short piece published in 1714, Joseph Addison
describes how a wife's collecting obsession with china
prompts her to sell old clothes for fine ceramics:
The common way of purchasing such trifles, if I may be
lieve my female informers, is by exchanging old suits of
cloaths for this brittle ware. The potters of china have it
seems, their factors at this distance, who retail out their sev
eral manufactures for cast cloaths and superannuated gar
ments. I have known an old petticoat metamorphosed into
a punch-bowl, and a pair of breeches into a teapot. For this
reason my friend Tradewell in the city calls his great room,
that is nobly furnished out with china, his wife's wardrobe.
In yonder corner, says he, are above twenty suits of cloaths,
and on that scrutore above a hundred yards of furbelowed
silk. You cannot imagine how many night-gowns, stays and
mantoes, went to the raising of that pyramid. The worst of
it is, says he, a suit of cloaths is not suffered to last half its
time, that it may be the more vendible; so that in reality this
is but a more dextrous way of picking the husband's pocket,
who is often purchasing a great vase of china, when he fan
cies that he is buying a fine head, or a silk gown for his
wife.36

The story certainly associates women and china,

making clear associations between women and the
Fig 5. The Catch Singers (1775). Courtesy of Guildhall Library, fragility of the material. In her book, Consuming Sub
Corporation of London. jects (1997), Kowaleski-Wallace reads this story as a

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 Barbarity in a Teacup?

comment on the lack of control husbands had over very sight of a China-dish'.42 Women are linked to
female consumers with a passion?an expensive and china generally and to 'an Indian Mandarine', 'a great
wasteful one?for china. For her, 'the image of china vase of china', 'a teapot or a china cup' and jars' in
is key to a discussion about controlling female desire particular.43 Addison's illustration of the penchant for
to acquire and collect'.37 In this way, the association women to sell their clothing for china?T have know
with tea is disempowering for women. Kowaleski an old petticoat metamorphosed into a punchbowl,
Wallace gives an account of the development of a and a pair of breeches into a tea-pot'?does not simply
female subjectivity in which the body and its display present these two objects as examples of women's taste,
are emphasized and through which women are though. Rather, in the context of a wife slyly using her
defined as consumers not producers. The tea-table is husband's resources for china buying (foreign and
imagined as a stage for the performance of female superfluous china at that: there are at least two refer
corporeality and consumption. And onto women's ences to the eastern origins of china, and the piece ends
special relationship to china contemporaries could with an exhortation for women to buy British brown
project more general desires and anxieties about an earthenware), it seems to suggest an inversion. The
emerging consumer culture.38 horror and inappropriateness of exchanging clothes for
This latter point?that gendered discussions of tea china is made all the more outrageous by the transfor
expressed anxieties about consumption?has been mation of a woman's petticoat into a punchbowl and a
developed by David Porter. With attention to mascu man's breeches into a teapot.
linity, though, he has demonstrated that the damage The juxtaposition between tea and punch was one
that tea was believed to effect upon men's bodies that was also meaningful in the North American colo
articulated a perceived economic threat of the Chi nies. This should not surprise us. There was no national
nese to the British. While the Chinese taste appealed boundary between the British colonies and Britain:
to some men as an alternative sensibility, however, 'America' simply did not exist as a political entity.
Porter agrees that the rituals and objects of the tea Moreover, in terms of both material culture but also
table are gendered as feminine.39 Men are certainly dominant modes of taste and fashion, the experiences of
restored as consumers of the Chinese taste, and even those in the British colonies were more British than
of tea, in this more recent work, yet not as consumers 'American'. Many studies of material culture have dem
of tea-drinking objects. onstrated this.44 The now familiar concept of a 'British
Women were known to have a strong affinity with Atlantic world', or even an 'Atlantic world', allows us
china and were reprimanded for collecting masses of to think not necessarily in terms of 'international' or
the stuff. Indeed, 'women's association with fine china 'global' connections, but certainly to acknowledge the
is used to associate women in the domestic interior and cultural, social, political and economic links forged
define femininity by the consumption [. . .] of pretty across and around this oceanic basin.45
objects'.40 The Addison piece shows how this fiction Thus, in the later 1720s and early 1730s, the
associated women and china as one part of a broader Pennsylvania Gazette featured a number of comments
debate about the vices and virtues of consumption on the dangers of alcoholic drinks that chimed with
more generally; a woman who subverts her husband's discussions in the English periodical press. On 1 Feb
control over the resources of the household constitutes ruary 1733, for example, an advertisement reported
a kind of gender disorder, certainly. But there is also concerns about the drinking of 'spirits and strong
another layer of gender subversion buried within this waters' by 'people of inferior rank', which renders
piece, one from petticoats to punchbowls and breeches them 'unfit for useful labour, intoxicating them, and
to teapots. An association?of women with tea and debauching their morals, and leading them into all
men with punch?has been subverted, and this is manner of vices and wickedness'.46 Such associations
another sign that something is amiss.41 China may well were a far cry from those of 'Decency, Neatness and
be connected to women, but certain forms of china are TEA-TABLE DECORUM' puffed in an advert for
particularly so (teapots), while other forms are particu pewter tea wares in the issue of 15 March.47 Into this
larly associated with men. Addison starts with a juxta context, and clearly drawing on the associations of
position of Mrs Anne Page's fondness for 'china-ware' alcohol and squander, and tea and decorum, on 31
and his 'aversion'; indeed, he is now made 'sick at the May 1733 the Gazette published a letter from 'Patience

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 Karen Harvey

Teacraft'. Patience is the only daughter of an 'honest

Tradesman', but her tradesman husband drank and
gamed away much of his wife's fortune early in their
marriage. First, Patience had tried to wean him off his
bad habits with a small tea-table and cups, which he
refused on the grounds that 'the Cups were so small,
and the tea so weak'. She had then acquired 'a large
home made Tea-Table, and a set of Earthen Plates
and Punch Bowls'. Filling one of the bowls with
strong tea, the husband acquired a taste for this in
preference to the 'strong Liquor'. Over time, Patience
was able to reduce the size of the vessels from which
the tea was drunk, reintroducing the smaller vessels
and table, and then selling the punchbowls to a tavern
keeper. Since then, she reports, her husband 'does
Fig 6. Richard Collins, A Family at Tea, c. 1726. Oil on canvas,
not require the tenth Part of the Stuff he us'd to do, 64.2 x 76.3 cm. Courtesy of V & A Images/Victoria and Albert
and yet does more Work, gets more Money, and is in Museum, London.
good Credit with his Neighbours'. These impressive
gains were both moral and economic?or, as con
temporaries would have described this combination, tea bowl in one hand.51 And while it was true that the
'oeconomical'. They arose because Patience converted punchbowl was intended as an item for serving, and
her husband not only from punch to tea but also from the tea bowl for drinking, anxieties about uncivilized
excessive volumes of drink to moderate amounts.48 drinkers putting their lips directly to the punchbowl
It was only from the middle of the eighteenth cen (as mentioned above) circulated. The comparison lay
tury that the English started to drink tea and coffee in not simply in the size of the vessel, then, but also in
larger vessels than the small Chinese tea bowl.49 At the the kind of occasion being intimated, an occasion for
time that Patience Teacraft's letter was published, the which the size of the vessel was a clear indication.
size of a small tea bowl would have contrasted sharply The contrast between the representations of the
with large punchbowls. Yet there were obvious simi punch-drinking and tea-drinking occasions, as we have
larities in form, design and materials. Moreover, in the seen, was tied closely to oeconomy or the management
1730s, these beverages still retained exotic connota of household resources and the moral implications
tions.50 The parallels were evident to contempo thereof. Through its excess and lack of discipline,
raries?whereas Addison aligned punchbowl and punch drinking could operate as a sign of men's
teapot, Patience Teacraft exchanged punchbowl with neglect (or of being relieved) of their oeconomical
tea bowl. This must have been one important context duties. Women have long criticized men for spending
of viewing the contrasting images of raucous groups of too much time and money on alcoholic consumption
men gathered around a swollen punchbowl (as in outside the home.52 The points of criticism have often
Hogarth's Midnight Modern Conversation) and the more been both economic and moral: men have wasted
disciplined and stately images of tea being served by hard-earned and precious household resources and
women in delicate and tiny hand-held bowls [6]. Such have also been led to behave uncivilly at home.
a contrast must have become only too clear on the Representations of men's punch drinking away from
very rare occasions when a punchbowl was displayed the home in the first half of the eighteenth century fit
with only one drinker (for example, the apparently well with this seam of negative discussion. And cer
fictitious portrayal of the pseudonymous author Fer tainly in the first half of the eighteenth century, gen
nando Flip) [2]. Given the associations of punch, such dered distinctions between tea, women and home, on
portraits of a solitary drinker (a man), seated alone the one hand, and punch, men and outside, on the
with a full bowl (possibly containing as much as two other, were extremely potent in visual and print cul
or three pints of strong alcohol), compared strikingly ture. 'Patience Teacraft' expressed a widely repre
with the man or woman holding their dainty single sented vision in which men's consumption of punch

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 Barbarity in a Teacup?

was?physically but also morally?outside the bounds connection to the farmer, Highmore, the schoolmas
of home, while tea was accommodated comfortably ter, the bowl, the carafe and back to the farmer's
into the domestic interior. In references to punch and hand. The connection is made through men's bodies
tea, we can see not simply an association between and their connection to objects in the home. Signifi
women and china, then, but reflections on the rela cantly, the bowl in this painting is small, so small that
tionship between men and consumption and between it may belong just to the schoolmaster. Highmore's
men and domesticity. depiction of a gathering of men has some features in
common with the many popular images of punch
parties, such as that featured in Hogarth's painting A
Domesticity and gender Midnight Modern Conversation, suggesting perhaps a
A rare depiction of men uniting around a bowl at spectrum of occasions during which men could be
home, one that therefore disrupts this division be imagined united around a bowl. Both paintings are
tween tea, women and home, on the one hand, and understood to show identifiable, 'real', men, gathered
punch, men and outside, on the other, will reinforce around a bowl. But the Highmore depiction is of a
further the potency of domesticity in transforming significantly different gathering: Highmore shows a
drinking occasions. The painting, Mr Oldham and his sociable but restrained encounter, intimate but also
Guests (c. 1735-45) by Joseph Highmore, was pro disciplined, in which there is sharing but each man
duced to commemorate a dinner that took place at has his own vessel. While replicating a sense of male
Oldham's Ealing home [7].53 Oldham arrived late, sharing and sociability around objects, the dividing
however, and his three guests?a farmer (seated left), line between home and outside is palpable. Already
a schoolmaster (seated right) and Highmore himself our understanding of domesticity and masculinity is
(seated rear right)?dined without him. The painting enriched. Domesticity held a transformative power
depicts Oldham's arrival home. While the whiff of over men's homosocial activities: encounters around
crossness on the face of the schoolmaster may engen a bowl in the home are very different from those
der a degree of tension, these men seem relaxed in encounters outside. But the reverse might also be
each other's company. Most striking in this painting true; how might the inclusion of men's homosocial
is the intimacy of the group. These men do not form activities in the home change our understanding of
the formal circle we can see in depictions of punch domesticity?
parties in clubs and coffee houses. And yet they are Arguably, the painting of Oldham marks a shift. By
bunched so closely that they touch and connect: from the middle of the eighteenth century, gendered asso
Oldham leaning on the chair-back we can follow this ciations, between home and outside, bound up with
notions of barbarity and refinement, excess and
restraint, were well established. This is significant
because for some historians it was actually the second
half of the eighteenth century that saw a breach open
ing up between men?and their homosocial, fraternal
gatherings?and the home. Carole Shammas suggests
that there was a tension between female-orchestrated
domesticity and the increasing tendency of men to go
outside the home for sociability, and this is something
also suggested in a seminal article by John Tosh.54 This
bifurcation of male and female homosocial and domes
tic drinking cultures in the latter half of the eighteenth
century finds an echo in studies which juxtapose cof
fee house with tea-table.55 Yet documentary evidence
about and of objects (rather than practices) from the
second half of the eighteenth century is actually more
Fig 7. Joseph Highmore, Mr Oldham and his Guests, c. 1735-45. striking for the picture it gives of the way the home
Oil on canvas, 1235 x 1475 x 88 mm. Courtesy of T?te Images. was becoming a common place of different kinds of

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 Karen Harvey
sociability. Sarah Richards has commented on how
the middle-class family accommodated the gendered
ceremonies associated with 'the punchbowl, the pipe,
and the tea-table'. Importantly, Richards' claims are
not that men and women united together around
these objects, rather that forms of sociability took place
at different times or in different spaces, though all
under the same roof. Women could drink tea or cof
fee during the day, for example, but they left the room
when the punchbowl was taken out; in larger homes,
different rooms were used for particular social occa
sions.56 Mr. Oldham and his Guests reinforces this
revised view that, rather than being excluded, the
practices of homosociability were accommodated in
the home. And yet they were accommodated in
revised form, assimilated to domesticity, a culture that
might now legitimately encompass tea drinking but
also homosocial punch drinking.
From mid-century, punch could be drunk not only
out of bowls but also out of pots. These objects are a
rich source of otherwise unarticulated contemporary
understandings of some of the key gendered distinc
tions discussed above. Yet I have been able to find
only one visual reference to a punch pot in use, and
this is on the side of a pot. The Pennington blue
and white thrown punch pot, made at Liverpool
between c.1780 and 1790, displayed the graceful
spout, elaborate double-twist handle and moulded
bird cover seen on many other domestic objects made
by the Pennington brothers [8].57 Watney has specu
Fig 8. Punch pot, Seth or John Pennington, 1780-1790. Thrown
porcelain, h 29 cm; w 35 cm. Courtesy of National Museums
Liverpool [1969.177.2].
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lated that such pieces were an attempt to compete
with the recently successful Wedgwood creamware.58
It is perhaps significant that it is on such an elegant
and aspirant punch pot that we find a picture of a
group drinking from such a vessel. Pennington spe
cialized in punchbowls, often illustrated with ships.
But on the pot he has depicted a convivial outdoor
gathering of music after a game of battledore and
shuttlecock, in which a man and woman dance, while
a man and two other women drink from tumblers.
And, in a self-reflective moment, Pennington has
placed on the table his own distinctive punch pot.59
Extant punch pots suggest this was a rare decorative
manoeuvre, but of course there are many examples of
images of drinking on surviving drinking vessels,
notably punchbowls. Indeed, Pennington was surely
self-consciously echoing those punchbowls made ear
lier in the century decorated with Hogarthian images
of punch parties. The pun is clear: the refinement of
a mixed and genteel gathering of men and women
drinking punch out of a cream-coloured pot is in part
moulded from an older tradition of raucous homoso
cial gatherings around the illustrated punchbowl.60
Written references to punch pots are similarly
scant. In the sale of the Duchess of Portland's posses
sions in spring 1786, a 'large blue japan punch pot
and cover' was sold, in a lot with two dishes, one
basin and two stands, for ?\ 10s.61 Punch pots could
be objects of curiosity then, but perhaps for their
materials more than for their form. The impression
that these objects were rare, suggested by the few
extant examples and a dearth of visual and written
references, is confirmed by an apparent dearth of
archaeological evidence.62 Here is an object that
stands alone, and the analysis necessarily relies on the
shape, design, materials and decoration of the objects
themselves.
The teapot form was simply adopted on a larger
scale for a different beverage; punch pots were literally
overgrown teapots. Identified primarily by size, then,
curators have sought to further distinguish them from
teapots by pointing to the absence of the internal
strainer at the base of the spout (common to all tea
pots and necessary to retain the tea leaves). Larger
holes were perfectly adequate to the fruit solids pres
ent in punch.63 Apart from these differences, punch
pots were?like teapots?made from a range of mate
rials. Early production was centred in Staffordshire,
where punch pots made from salt-glazed stoneware
 Barbarity in a Teacup?

appeared from around 1755. Some of these were dec jokes. These were large and often hand-painted items,
orated with relatively simple floral designs reminis made to order and extremely expensive.
cent of those found on punchbowls.64 Other punch Despite the use of playful decoration and the some
pots echoed punchbowls through the use of inscrip what traditional inscriptions, in materials and design,
tion: one Leeds cream-coloured earthenware punch punch pots could also clearly ape the refinement asso
pot displayed the simple inscription, 'Punch',65 while ciated with the finest and most fashionable ceramics.
the lead-glazed earthenware pot made in Staffordshire White salt-glazed stoneware itself?a very common
or York was hand-painted 'George Wilson, 1778' material for punch pots?serviced 'a middle-income
[9].66 Certainly, some punch pots were decorated in group which could not afford porcelains for its tea
such a way that proclaimed their use for a beverage and dining tables, yet wished to be perceived as hav
quite different from tea. One striking design applied ing such'.70 White salt-glazed stoneware production
to several different versions of punch pots in Stafford reached a peak around 1760, becoming less fashion
shire depicted Bacchus?the god of wine?astride a able in the later decades of the century as creamware
barrel holding aloft a wine glass.67 Another Staffordemerged; indeed, it has been said that creamware
shire punch pot, made c.1760, shows two men drink 'eliminated the long-established salt-glazed stone
ing with musical accompaniment and joined at the ware'.71 The production of punch pots also appears
table by a half-naked goddess.68 A pearlware pot dat to have declined at this point, though some white
ing from c.1780 to 1800 boasts a depiction of'Conju salt-glazed pots continued to be produced. Yet the
gal Felicity' on one side; but on the other this has newer refined material was also used for punch pots:
become a 'Red-Hot Marriage'.69 Punch pots?like a plain creamware punch pot dating c.1775 from
teapots?could be playful, but they were not simply Leeds, for example, was clearly intended to be elegant
and refined.72 Similarly, a stunning Worcester punch
pot from C.1765 to 1775, richly painted with gold and
echoing Japanese porcelain, was surely worthy of the
Duchess of Portland's cabinet.73 A more restrained
pot, though no less desirable, is a Wedgwood punch
pot dating from c. 1755 to 1760 featuring a delicate
design of classical ruins and landscapes; this was sim
ply a larger version of a series of teapots decorated
with similar designs [10]. 74

Fig 10. Punch pot, Staffordshire, c. 1755-60. Salt-glazed

Fig 9. 'George Wilson' punch pot, Staffordshire or York, 1778. stoneware painted in enamel colours, h 19 cm, 1 19.9 cm, w 8.2
Lead-glazed earthenware, Courtesy of V & A Images/Victoria cm. Courtesy of V & A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum,
and Albert Museum, London [3644&A-19011. London [C.42A-1938].

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 Karen Harvey

Punch pots were thus often indistinguishable (from pots to be integrated more easily into a domestic
the outside at least) from teapots, apart from their size. environment ruled increasingly by coordination.
Indeed, perhaps the most interesting punch pots are Given the very strong cultural associations between
those that mimicked teapots not only in basic shape punch drinking, barbarity and men on the one hand
and materials but also in decoration. It is no surprise and tea drinking, refinement and women on the
that these objects shared decorative designs: '[c]eramics other, modelling punch pots on teapots is striking.
were just as susceptible to the fickleness of fashionable There is an unmistakeable self-consciousness about
scrutiny as dress or household furnishings'.75 Tasteful the design parallels between punch pots and teapots.
and fashionable designs were applied to all ceramic Indeed, the similarities in decoration between tea
objects. Clear evidence of the impact of distinctive pots and punch, combined with the stark differences
fashions on the manufacture of punch pots are those in size, must have served as a visual pun. This is cer
produced by Longton Hall in the characteristic boldly tainly the suggestion of the Pennington punch pot,
designed and vividly coloured heavy paste. Two one that combined the form of the teapot with the
Longton Hall punch pots dating from c.1755 survive, decorative logic of the punchbowl. Yet given the
shaped from vibrant green grape leaves and purple considerable expense of these objects, the intention
grapes.76 A later punch kettle, made in brown and must surely have gone further than a witty comment
blue 'Botavian', gave little of its use away: it is only on refinement and barbarity.
size, and the lack of a strainer (replaced by a large and Such imposing and centrally placed objects out of
carefully made hole), that show it not to be a tea which the shared drink was served possessed consid
kettle [ll].77 erable agency, and this new kind of vessel would have
Susan Detweiler has referred to 'the independent significantly changed the nature of the punch-drinking
punchbowl', commenting that these bowls rarely occasion. To be sure, it reinforced a pre-existing
matched tableware sets because punch was not usu analogy between tea and punch, one already made
ally served with meals.78 Although true of many apparent in comparisons of the punchbowl and tea
bowls, over the eighteenth century, it was increas bowl. Crucially, though, the lidded punch pot was
ingly common for bowls to match the designs of less open to the excess of the uncovered and shared
other tableware. This was even truer of punch pots, punchbowl, and the drink was also now more likely
which were not marked out from other objects made to be served in a controlled manner by one person
for the home. In adopting not only the form but also who poured, rather than dipped in by each partici
the designs of teapots, manufacturers allowed punch pant. Placing punch in a pot civilized and refined the
drink. We can go further and claim that the pot
domesticated the drink in two senses: making it more
familiar and less threatening, at the same time as it was
literally integrated more easily into domestic material
culture. Gone were those murky associations of
drunkenness, impoliteness and the dereliction of
oeconomical duties. This is important because we
know that punch pots were taken into the clubbable
world of male homosociability. One creamware
punch kettle, probably made in Leeds around 1780, is
decorated with printed Masonic symbols [12].79 This
is a fascinating object, suggestive of the manner in
which domestic ceremony may have transformed the
enclosed worlds of male gatherings.80 It provides a
tantalizing glimpse of the way in which men may
have not simply abandoned home when they left and
Fig 11. Tea/Punch kettle, Yorkshire or Staffordshire, c. 1800. entered a male associational world. Instead, they
Courtesy of V & A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London incorporated domesticity into that homosocial world
[C.103&A-1911]. through their adoption of objects and practices that

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 Barbarity in a Teacup?

imitated those that were exemplary of a feminine binding toasts and male excess. Domesticity around a
domestic space. punch pot was perhaps not all that it seemed.
At the same time, of course, domesticity itself was The gendered use of ceramic objects in domestic
transformed. After 1750, it was possible to integrate ceremony can work to reinforce gender difference,
the consumption of punch more fully not just into the particularly because the objects used are everyday
physical space of the home but also into a culture of objects. 'The ritual legitimation of the social order is
domesticity, through the adoption of the material reflected and reinforced by the everyday legitimation
form of the object that had by then become exem of repeated use'.82 Whoever lays claim to the ritual
plary of domestic sociability: the teapot. Certainly at pot, as opposed to the mundane pot, for example,
the level of cultural constructs, men were integrated reinforces their superior status. In this sense, while
into the ceremonies of domesticity. This shifts our punchbowls and teapots may have 'belonged' to men
understanding of sociable domestic culture, severing and women, punch pots were neither male nor
what has appeared to be a necessary link between female. Instead, these ceramic objects for punch
women and/or the feminine and domesticity. But in drinking at home represent a blurring of or a falling
addition to facilitating the integration of men and between genders. Their short-lived and limited pro
domesticity, the domestication of punch through the duction suggests a meditation on gender stereotypes
pot arguably made this strong alcoholic drink more more than a serious attempt to disrupt them. Yet they
freely available to women.81 The effect, I would argue, are the material remains of a particular kind of domes
is neither a masculinization of the home nor a femini ticity that emerged in the third quarter of the eigh
zation of punch drinking. Instead, these objects served teenth century. This integrated?playfully and
to bring men and women together in a domestic cer self-consciously?both men and women, at a time
emony that bore traces of older punch parties charac when that very discourse of comfort, leisure and
terized by informal merriment, dynamic circles, retreat was being consolidated. It was in this rapidly
changing context that the refinement of tea and the
barbarity of punch were united?if not in a cup?
then certainly in a pot.
In around 1775, the Wedgwood factory produced
a teapot decorated with two transfer prints. On one
side is 'The Pipe and Punch Party', the same image
that was used on the Wedgwood bowl mentioned
above, depicting five men sitting in a plain pastoral

Fig 12. Masonic punch kettle, Leeds[?], c. 1780. Transfer-printed Fig 13. Teapot, c. 1775, Wedgwood. Transfer-printed
creamware. Courtesy of V & A Images/Victoria and Albert creamware, h 183 mm. Illustrated with 'The smoking party'.
Museum, London [3556-1901]. Courtesy of Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery [B548].

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 Karen Harvey
Notes
Fig 14. Teapot, c. 1775, Wedgwood. Transfer-printed creamware,
h 183 mm. Illustrated with 'The pipe and punch party'. Courtesy
of Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery [B548].
scene engaged in a restrained gathering. On the other
side of this teapot is 'The Smoking Party': nine men,
gathered around a large punchbowl, variously raising
a toast, slumped asleep in the chair, chatting amongst
themselves and absent-mindedly setting a cuff alight
[13, 14]. With debris strewn across the floor, and a
dog curled up asleep beside a chamber pot in the
foreground, this is clearly Hogarth updated.83 Here
we have a depiction of raucous male sociability and
punch drinking, but on the side of a teapot. The
domestic object now openly declared its affinity with
masculine sociability.
Karen Harvey
University of Sheffield
k.harvey@sheffield.ac.uk
If you have any comments to make in relation to this article, please go
to the journal website on http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org and access this
article. There is a facility on the site for sending email responses to the
editorial board and other readers.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Trevor Cunnick, Katarina Grant,
Jason Kelly, Simon Middleton, David Moffat, Andrew Morrall,
James Shaw, David Smith, Greg Smith, Francesca Vanke, and
particularly to Mike Braddick, Brian Cowan, Phil Withington,
Hilary Young. I am also grateful to members of the University of
Sheffield Early Modern Discussion Group and audiences at
University of Sheffield Department of Archaeology, University of
Sheffield Social Sciences Workshop on Masculinities, ASECS
2007, and the Warwick Ceramics Day at Waddesdon Manor.
Work for this article was partially funded by a grant from the
British Academy and a Huntington Fellowship, and supported by
staff at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, and at the
Huntington Library, Pasadena.
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1 B. Hillier, 'Punch bowls', Connoisseur, October 1962, p. 653.
2 S. Richards, Eighteenth-Century Ceramics: Products for a Civilized
Society, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1999, pp.
102-7.
3 For a very helpful recent statement on politeness, see L. E.
Klein, 'Politeness and the Interpretation of the British
Eighteenth Century', Historical Journal, vol. 45, 2002, pp. 869
98. On gender and politeness, see L. E. Klein, 'Gender,
Conversation and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century
England', in Textuality and Sexuality: Reading Theories and
Practices, J. Still & M. Worton (eds.), Manchester University
Press, Manchester, 1993, pp. 100-15; P. Carter, Men and the
Emergence of Polite Society, Britain 1660-1800, Longman,
Harlow, 2000. On politeness in a longer tradition of civility,
see A. Bryson, From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of
Conduct in Early Modern England, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 1998.
4 B. Cowan, The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British
Coffeehouse, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2005; M. Ellis,
The Coffee House: A Cultural History, Weidenfeld & Nicolson,
London, 2004.
5 See, for example, H. Berry, '"Nice and Curious Questions":
Coffee Houses and the Representation of Women in J.
Dunton's Athenian Mercury', The Seventeenth Century, vol. 12,
1997, pp. 257-76; op. cit., 'Rethinking Politeness in
Eighteenth-Century England: Moll King's Coffee House and
the Significance of "Flash Talk'", Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society, 6th series, 11, 2001, pp. 65-81; B. Cowan,
'What was Masculine about the Public Sphere?: Gender and
the Coffeehouse Milieu in Post-Restoration England', History
Workshop Journal, vol. 51, 2001, pp. 127-57; S. Pincus, '"Coffee
Politicians does Create": Coffeehouses and Restoration
Political Culture', Journal of Modern History, vol. 67, 1995, pp.
807-34.
6 Shammas' key article discusses equipment for hot drinks using
probate inventories, for example, while the work of Elizabeth
Kowaleski-Wallace focuses to a considerable degree on the
material culture of tea. See C. Shammas, 'The Domestic
Environment in Early Modern England and America', Journal
of Social History, vol. 14, 1980, pp. 3-24; E. Kowaleski-Wallace,
'Women, China, and Consumer Culture in Eighteenth
Century England', Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 29, 1995-6,
pp. 153-67; op. cit., 'Tea, Gender, and Domesticity in
Eighteenth-Century England', Studies in Eighteenth-Century
Culture, vol. 23, 1994, pp. 131-45.
7 R. Roth, 'Tea-Drinking in Eighteenth-Century America: Its
Etiquette and Equipage', in R. B. St George (ed.), Material Life
in America, 1600-1860, Northeastern University Press, Boston,
1988, pp. 439-42.
8 See the items in the previous footnotes, but also A. Vickery,
The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England,
Yale University Press, New Haven, 1998, p. 208.
9 S. Richards, Eighteenth-Century Ceramics, pp. 1, 2.
10 On drink see, for example, J. Burnett, Liquid Pleasures: A Social
History of Drinks in Modern Britain, Routledge, London, 1999;
B. A. Kiimin & Ann B. Tlusty (eds.), Tlie World of the Tavern:
Public Houses in Early Modern Europe, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2002;
A. Smyth (ed.), A Pleasing Sinne: Drink and Conviviality in
Seventeenth-Century England, Brewer, Cambridge, 2004.
 Barbarity in a Teacup?
IIS. Richards, Eighteenth-Century Ceramics, pp. 92, 94.
12 See K. Harvey, 'Ritual Encounters: Punch Parties and Masculinity
in the Eighteenth Century' (paper presented to the North-Western
Long Eighteenth-Century Seminar, Manchester, October 2007),
for more on the social and economic context of punch.
13 A. Symthe, A Pleasing Sinne, pp. xvi-ix.
14 J. Hunter, 'The Legislative Framework', pp. 74, 78.
15 W. Fuller, The Whole Life of Mr. William Fuller, London, 1703,
p. 77.
16 B. Lillywhite, London Coffee Houses. A Reference Book of Coffee
Houses of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,
Allen & Unwin, London, 1963, pp. 339, 671, 677.
17 A pewter punchbowl engraved with the name of the London
Punch House, dated c.1750, has recently been found to be a
reproduction. On the bowl, see H. H. Cotterell, Old Pewter: Its
Makers and Marks in England, Scotland and Ireland, Batsford,
London, 1929, p.87; op. cit., p. 677. The bowl was subsequently
given to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and
declared a modern reproduction. The accompanying ladle is
genuine, however. The initials 'JA' appear on the base, and
they are thought to be those of J. Ashley. See A. North & A.
Spira, Pewter at the Victoria and Albert Museum, V & A
publications, London, 1999, no. 140, p. 108.
18 K. S. Rice, Early American Taverns: For the Entertainment of
Friends and Strangers, Fraunces Tavern Museum, New York,
1983, p. 81. This reproduces an image of a delftware bowl made
in England that was found at the site of a tavern in Williamsburg,
Va. Rice also reproduces the painting, 'Interior of an America
Inn' (1813), by J. L. Krimmel (p. 84). This shows a dresser
behind the male drinkers and a series of vessels?including two
ceramic punchbowls?stacked on the shelves. Another painting
(p. 91), of Sea Captains in Surinam, also shows many bowls on
the shelves being filled and handed to customers. One man lifts
an overflowing bowl to his lips. D. W. Conroy, In Public Houses:
Drink & the Revolution of Authority in Colonial Massachusetts,
University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1995, p. 93,
also reports that no fewer than eight silver punchbowls were
kept at the Crown Coffee House in Massachusetts, c. 1715.
19 Old Bailey Proceedings Online [from now on OBP] (www.
oldbaileyonline.org, February 2006), trial of Thomas Hall,
May 1753, tl7530502-29.
20 P. Clark, British Clubs and Societies 1580-1800: The Origins of
an Associational World, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000; B.
Lillywhite, London Coffee Houses.
21 Small bowls called 'sneakers' were available in both England
and North America. Such small punchbowls were still being
imported to America from China in the later 18th century. See
S. G. Detweiler, George Washington's Chinaware, Harry N
Abrams, New York, 1982, p. 209. Small bowls for the
consumption of what appear to be individual-sized measures of
punch were manufactured in England, see D. Drakard, Printed
English Pottery: History and Humour in the Reign of George III
1760-1820,]. Home, London, 1992, plates 210 and 211, p.
85. The 'two shilling sneaker' of punch referred to in one trial
is likely to have been a reasonably large bowl, suggesting the
term could be used in different ways. See OBP, trial of Gerald
Fitzgerald, February 1730, tl7300228-29.
22 OBP, trial of Job Massey and Henry Hart, April 1778,
?7780429-75.
23 Many are illustrated in L. L. Lipski, Dated English Delftware:
Tin-Glazed Earthenware 1600-1800, Sotheby Publications,
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1984. For example, 'Fill this Bowl Landlord', 1164; 'Drink fair,
don't swear': 1061, 1066, 1067, 1074, 1075, 1076; 'One bowl
more and then': 1149, 1150, 1151, 1155, 1156.
24 D. Edwards & R. Hampson, White Salt-Glazed Stoneware of
the British Isles, Antique Collectors' Club, Woodbridge, 1995,
p. 33.
25 For an illuminating example of material evidence revealing the
presence of women in saloons, where social reporting excludes
them, see K. J. Dixon, Boomtown Saloons: Archaeology and
History in Virginia City, University of Nevada Press, Reno,
2005, pp. 142-4, 160-2.
26 For an example of a glass bowl, see L. B.Grigsby, '"Drink Fair
Don't Swear": Winterthur's Punch Bowls and Punch Drinking
in America', Magazine Antiques, January, 2002, p. 8. I am
extremely grateful to Susan Newton at Winterthur for
providing me with considerable assistance for this part of my
research.
27 S. Richards, Eighteenth-Century Ceramics, p. 143.
28 This is based on a sampling of the OBP online, 1700-1800, for
all decades, and includes cases of theft and assault. While this
evidence is no more than suggestive, there seems little
convincing reason to expect thefts of punchbowls from
dwellings to be underreported.
29 H. Young, English Porcelain, 1745-95: Its Makers, Design,
Marketing and Consumption, V & A Publications, London, 1999,
pp. 183, 184.
30 S. Richards, Eighteenth-Century Ceramics, pp. 152, 153; on the
fork, see N. Elias, The Civilizing Process: Volume 1?The History
of Manners, 1939; Blackwell, Oxford, 1994, pp. 47-109, esp.
pp. 58-60, 107.
31 K. S. Rice, Early American Taverns, p. 98.
32 The image was reproduced on other drinking vessels, too,
although not (so far as extant examples would suggest) as
frequently as on punchbowls. For a brown stoneware tavern
tankard of 1737 from Colonial Williamsburg, see I. N. Hume,
If These Pots Could Talk: Collecting 2,000 Years of Household
Pottery, Chipstone Foundation, Hanover, 2001, pp. 155-62.
The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery has a similar, though
much later example (2005, C45), suggesting the continuing
popularity and perhaps nostalgic meaning of these objects. On
similar items, see W. W. Hamilton Foyn, 'Dated London
Brown Saltglazed Hunting Mugs 1713?75', English Ceramic
Circle Transactions, vol. 17, 2000, pp. 253-74.
33 London Guildhall, p5383649.
34 I discuss these representations of punch parties at greater length
in K. Harvey, 'Ritual encounters'.
35 C. Shammas, 'Domestic Environment', p. 18; A. Vickery,
Gentleman's Daughter, pp. 207?9.
36 J. Addison, 'The Lover', no. 10, Thursday, 18 March 1714, in
The Miscellaneous Works, in Verse and Prose, of the Right
Honourable Joseph Addison, London, 1765, vol. II, pp. 348,
349.
37 E. Kowaleski-Wallace, Consuming Subjects: Women, Shopping
and Business in the Eighteenth Century, New York, Columbia
University Press, 1997, p. 56.
38 Ibid., passim.
39 D. Porter, 'A Peculiar but Uninteresting Nation: China and
the Discourse of Commerce in Eighteenth-Century England',
Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 33, 2000, pp. 181-4; D. Porter,
'Monstrous Beauty: Eighteenth-Century Fashion and the
 Karen Harvey
Aesthetics of the Chinese Taste', Eighteenth-Century Studies,
vol. 5, 2002, pp. 406, 407.
40 See M. Vincentelli, Women and Ceramics: Gendered Vessels,
Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2000, pp. 111?3.
Quote at p. 254. See also S. Richards, Eighteenth-Century
Ceramics, pp. 100-4.
41 J. Addison, 'The Lover', p. 348.
42 Ibid., 347.
43 Ibid., 348, 349, 351.
44 Even a cursory look at the museum collections reveals the
heavy presence of British, European and Asian goods, including
many tea wares and punchbowls. For an example of a Chinese
export bowl in eighteenth-century Kentucky, see E. A.
Perkins, 'The Consumer Frontier: Household Consumption in
Early Kentucky', The Journal of American History, vol. 78, 1991,
pp. 489, 490. Later in the century, punch pots were also
imported from England. See J. Downs, 'Recent Additions to
the American Wing', The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin,
New Series, vol. 7, 1948, pp. 84, 85; for a saltglaze example
dating from c.1760. For a discussion of tea-related objects as 59 Ibid., pp. 84, 100. I am grateful to D. Moffat, at the National
part of'the lingua franca of gentility that linked disparate colonies Museums Liverpool, for assistance with research on this
and England', see A. S. Martin, 'Tea Tables Overturned:
Rituals of Power and Place in Colonial America', in Furnishing
the Eighteenth Century: What Furniture Can Tell Us about the
European and American Past, D. Goodman & K. Norberg (eds.),
Routledge, New York, 2007, p. 169.
45 For a recent example of the conceptual and organizational uses
of the term, see D. Armitage & M. J. Braddick, 'Introduction',
in The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800, D. Armitage and
M. J. Braddick (eds.), 2nd revised edition, Palgrave, Basingstoke,
2008 (forthcoming).
46 Pennsylvania Gazette, 1 February 1733. Thanks to S. Middleton
for providing me with this material.
47 Ibid., 15 March 1733
48 Ibid., 31 May 1733
49 S. Richards, Eighteenth-Century Ceramics, pp. 160, 161.
50 As suggested by Hogarth's clearly chinoiserie punchbowl in
the print of 'Midnight Modern Conversation', and Porter's
discussion of tea and Chinese taste, in 'A Peculiar but
Uninteresting Nation', pp. 181-4 and 'Monstrous Beauty', pp.
406, 407.
51 See, for example, the frontispiece to the Fernando Flip and the
painting of'Moses Marcy in a Landscape', ?.1760, reproduced
in K. S. Rice, Early American Taverns, p. 87. On Marcy, see D.
W. Conroy, In Public Houses, pp. 211-3. See also K. M.
Sweeney, 'Mansion People: Kinship, Class, and Architecture
in Western Massachusetts in the Mid Eighteenth Century',
Winterthur Portfolio, vol. 19, 1984, p. 248. Sweeney describes
this painting as an expression of Marcy's aspirations, and this
may well reflect the social and political ramifications of rum
punch that emerged in America later in the century.
52 A. Tlusty, 'Drinking, Family Relations and Authority in Early
Modern Germany', The Journal of Family History, vol. 29, 2004,
p.260; A. Tlusty, Bacchus and Civic Order: The Culture of Drink
in Early Modern Germany, University Press of Virginia,
Charlottesville, 2001, pp. 116?22; A. Vickery, Gentlemanfs
Daughter, pp. 213?7.
53 On this painting, see F. Antal, 'Mr. Oldham and His Guests by
Highmore', The Burlington Magazine, vol. 91, no. 554, 1949,
pp. 128-32; and the website of the T?te Collections <http://
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www. tate.org. uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=6218&;searchid
= 17745H>http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid
= 6218&searchid = 17745> (accessed June 2006).
54 C. Shammas, 'Domestic Environment', pp. 18, 19; J. Tosh,
'What Should Historians do with Masculinity?: Reflections on
Nineteenth-Century Britain', History Workshop Journal, vol. 38,
1994, pp. 179-202, esp. pp. 187-9.
55 Richards' comment that the coffee house was governed by
rules very different to those of the tea-table is reinforced when
one reads studies of the coffee house alongside studies of the
home. See S. Richards, Eighteenth-Century Ceramics, p. 99; and
n. 5, 6 and 7 above.
56 Ibid., p. 105; also see p. 143.
57 B. M. Watney, Liverpool Porcelain of the Eighteenth Century,
Richard Dennis, Shepton Beauchamp, 1997, plate 28c, p.
148.
58 B. M. Watney, Liverpool Porcelain, p. 7. Creamware or
'Queensware' was cream-coloured earthenware, produced
from the early 1760s.
object.
60 On these Hogarthian bowls, and their social and cultural
context, see K. Harvey, 'Ritual encounters'.
61 M. C. Bentinck, A Catalogue of the Portland Museum, lately the
property of The Duchess Dowager of Portland, London, 1786, p.
45. Digitized sources that offer full-text searches make this kind
of 'needle in a haystack' research much easier. But still,
Eighteenth-Century Collections Online brings up only two
references to punch pots: the one just noted and J. Christie,
Household Furniture of Duchess of Kingston, 1789, pp. 17, 32.
Both are sale catalogues and are simply glimpses of possession.
62 I have carried out extensive bibliographic searches, aided by
colleagues in archaeology, and have been unable to locate any
relevant research into punch pots. An article by W. H. Godfrey,
'The Royal Arms (punch house), Chichester', Sussex
Archaeological Collections, vol. 68,1927, is devoted to architecture
not objects.
63 It is likely that punch pots were not modelled on coffee pots in
part because the fruit solids in punch would have exited from a
lower spout. On identifying punch pots through the strainer,
see G. Savage & H. Newman, An Illustrated Dictionary of
Ceramics, 197'4; Thames and Hudson, London, 1985. Both tea
strainers and punch strainers were used, but both seem to be
relatively rare. See R. Roth, 'Tea-Drinking in Eighteenth
Century America', pp. 455, 456. I have found just one
reference to punch strainers, in the probate inventory of a
brazier, C. Raynolds, of 26 March 1724, where 'One stand,
Twenty Biskett Pans and Three Punch Strainers' were valued
at 5s 2d. Marlborough Probate Inventories, 1591-1775, ed. L.
Williams & S. Thomson, Wiltshire Record Society,
Chippenham, 2007, vol. 59, p. 281. For this essay, I have
compared the size of strainer holes of large pots with small pots,
and in almost all cases, the large pots lack smaller strainer holes
or strainers altogether. See comments on individual pots below.
I thank H. Young, Senior Curator of Ceramics at the Victoria
and Albert Museum, for discussing this issue with me.
64 For example, V & A C45-1938 Floral punch pot. The strainer
in this pot has holes of two sizes, large and small. See also
similar pots in English Pottery and Porcelain, 1300-1850, The
Detroit Institute of Arts, 1954, no. 84, p. 36; English Ceramic
220
 Barbarity in a Teacup?

Circle, English Pottery and Porcelain: Commemorative Catalogue of
an Exhibition Held at the Victoria and Albert Museum May 5th?
June 20th, 1948, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1949,
no. 98, plate 21; D. Edwards and R. Hampson, White Salt
Glazed Stoneware, p. 63, plate 45.
65 G. Savage and H. Newman, Illustrated Dictionary of Ceramics, p.
235.
66 VAM 3644&A-1901. This has a strainer with large holes.
67 D. Edwards & R. Hampson, White Salt-Glazed Stoneware of the
British Isles, Antique Collectors' Club, Woodbridge, 1995, p.
63, plate 46.
68 Ibid., p. 132, plate 108.
69 V & A, 593&A/1968. The holes in the strainer of this pot are
large.
70 D. Edwards and R. Hampson, White Salt-Glazed Stoneware, p. 55.
71 R. G. Haggar, A. R. Mountford & J. Thomas, The Staffordshire
Pottery Industry, 1967; Staffordshire County Libray, 1981, pp.
7, 10. Quote from p. 13.
72 See The English Ceramic Circle 1927-48, English Pottery and
Porcelain: Commemorative Catalogue of an Exhibition Held at the
Victoria and Albert Museum May 5th-June 20th, 1948, Routledge
and Kegan Paul, London, 1949, no. 124, p. 25; Illustration
plate 27. The height given here is 8/4 in.
73 D. C. Peirce, English Ceramics: The Frances and Emory Cocke
Collection, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Ga., c.1988, no. 157.
74 Victoria and Albert Museum: C.42&A-1938. The holes in the
strainer of this pot are the same size as the teapots to similar
designs. The design is the same as on the teapots C.57&A-1940
and C.27-1938.
75 D. Edwards and R. Hampson, White Salt-Glazed Stoneware, p.
59.
76 This pot is now in the collections of the Museum of London
[A 12267]. See also no. 141, D. C. Peirce, English Ceramics, for
one made to the same design. Another one seems to be
at the Norwich Castle Museum, NWHCM: 1946.70.526:
D/526.70.946.
77 V & A, C103&A-1911 Tea/punch kettle.
78 S. G. Detweiler, George Washington's Chinaware, p. 34.
79 V & A, 3556-1901 Masonic punch kettle. This kettle has no
strainer, but simply a large hole, making it unsuitable for tea.
80 See also J. Rendall, The Pursuit of Pleasure: Gender, Space &
Architecture in Regency London, Athlone, London, 2002, pp.
63-85, on the domesticity of men's clubs.
81 Punch decanted into a bottle might have had the same effect.
See P. Thompson, Rum Punch and Revolution: Tavern Going and
Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia, University of
Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1999, p. 192.
82 A. Welbourn, 'Endo Ceramics and Power Strategies', in
Ideology, Power and Prehistory, D. Miller & C. Tilley (eds.),
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1984, p. 23.
83 R. Emmerson, British Teapots & Tea Drinking 1750-1850,
HMSO, London, 1992, p. 74. The same image appears on a
Liverpool jug and a very similar depiction is on a Wedgwood
jug: see D. Drakard, Printed English Pottery, p. 86.

221

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