#99 Steven Moore - Drinking Vessels: Tea Cups, the Coupe Myth, Sharing Wine Glasses, Murano’s Glass Prison & Martinis in the Grand Canal

About this episode

This week we’re at the home of Steven Moore, Antiques Roadshow regular, former dealer, auctioneer, curator and pottery manufacturer, and the self-styled David Attenborough of teacups. It’s an episode best watched rather than heard, with a table full of objects that tell the story of how Britain learned to drink. We start with the cup and saucer: why the saucer was made for drinking from, how the raised little finger came before the handle, and why the champagne coupe owes nothing to Marie Antoinette. Steven explains how tea and coffee reached London within a decade of each other, why early tea was taxed as a brewed liquid and sent round town by coffee-house boys, and how the tea table gave…