The modern tea table presents a much less formal array of china and good things than that of a generation or two back when high tea was an important function, and the good wife of the household loaded her table with many substantial dishes. The best china was taken from the cupboard, and family heirlooms in silver were arrayed on either side of the teapot. Needless to say the teapot was an indispensable adjunct, and some of the teapots belonging to the old sets are massive and gorgeous, rather than beautiful, although the earlier teapots made in this country in the eighteenth century, a time when tea was expensive and a real luxury, were quite small. There are many curiosities, too--such, for instance, as the Chinese teapots of the Ming period, when the potters seem to have vied with one another in producing grotesque forms, and from china clay fashioned objects which typified their mythological beliefs. Some of these teapots took the form of curious sea-horses represented as swimming in waves of green and amidst seaweed. Some of these fabulous beasts are spotted over with splashes of colour, and others have curious twig-like formations upon their sides, said to denote pieces of coral and water plants from the ocean. The teapot was at one time most frequently filled from the pretty little oval copper or brass kettle on the hob, or from a swing kettle on a stand on the table. The table kettle was generally heated by a spirit lamp which kept the water boiling ready for use. Of later years silver table appointments of early eighteenth-century make have become very scarce, and the curio value of the larger pieces has steadily risen. It would seem as if the maximum figure had been reached for silver of that period, for at the sale of the Fitzhenry collection a plain kettle and stand, an example of Ambrose Stevenson's work in 1717, realized L697. Cream Jugs. The cream jug included in the tea and coffee sets of silver or metal, and in the tea china of which so many beautiful sets are still extant, has almost an independent position in connection with table appointments, for ever since tea drinking became general it was regarded as a necessity, and was made in accord with the then prevailing styles. It is almost the commonest collectable antique in this particular group. In silver it was always hall-marked, and its date can, therefore, be fixed. Briefly outlining the development of its form, it may be mentioned that it was quite plain in the reign of Queen Anne, when tea drinking came into fashion. When George I came to the throne it was widened somewhat and made a little shorter. At that time the silver cream jugs were hammered into shape out of a flat sheet, there being no seam; after the body was formed a rim was added and a lip put on. There was a deeper rim in the reign of George II, and then feet took the place of rims. [Illustration: FIG. 26.--EARLY ENGLISH BRONZE EWER. (_In the British Museum._)]