Rare 4-piece Victorian silver tea & coffee set

An unusual antique silver tea and coffee service with ovoid bodies and comprising a teapot, coffee pot, sugar bowl and milk or cream jug. Each piece is finely hand-engraved with four scenes depicting the different aspects of the growing and processing of the produce that is used in the piece.

The teapot has Chinese scenes of harvesting in a tea plantation, transporting the tea and packing it into tea chests. The coffee pot features the coffee beans being harvested, bagged and taken on a camel, being loaded at the docks and finally being served to a Middle Eastern turbaned coffee drinker. The cream jug shows a maid milking a cow, and the other images present the milk being carried, churned and pressed. Images on the sugar bowl show men growing and cutting the sugar on the plantation, barrels being built and rolled with factories on the horizon and a scene showing the barrels being unloaded against a backdrop of a bridge and domed church which is almost certainly St Paul's in London.

This is a wonderful and rare service.