Breakfast Tea Set "Blue Garden"

The noble aura of this seductive MEISSEN® Art Work is such as to elevate the everyday habit of drinking tea into a fully-fledged tea ceremony. This exquisite breakfast tea set is akin to a royal invitation. It honours the guest and reveals the host to be a connoisseur of special rules of etiquette without any need for verbal embellishment. The gesture of invitation conveyed by this déjeuner is a stylish cue for conversation based on respectful acknowledgment, for cultivated dialogue to match that conducted between the artfully painted cobalt blue and the gold of the set’s extravagant ground. And what a ravishing unity it is the latter give rise to! The MEISSEN® Manufactory produced early combinations of this kind back in the 1720s and 1730s, though on an exceeding- ly rare basis. Tea was still a highly exotic substance but had by now been embraced by the European nobility. Every Dutch ship running goods from China and Japan for the East Indies Company had a cargo of tea on board from 1637 onwards. Tea was also carried by land to the royal courts of Europe. The first delivery of tea to the Tsarist Court in Russia arrived from Mongolia in 1618. “Caravanserai tea” soon came to be regarded as superior, as the means of storage on ships was detrimental to the tea’s aroma. The porcelain from which this sublime drink from the Orient was to be enjoyed needed to be fashioned in a manner every bit as prestigious. MEISSEN® Manufactory artists were just as much masters of their trade then as now and duly came up with goods. This breathtaking breakfast tea set is a consummate pleasure to be enjoyed at length – in celebration of Meissen’s prowess.