How to host a retro tea party?

[Puzzicato]

I think mother's ruin was cheap! And probably tasted so bad you needed lots of other flavours in there to mask it. Like modern vodka cocktails.

 

[BinkieBaumont]

No maybe about it! I like old fashioned champagne cocktails with afternoon tea.


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"If its fearfully hot, I like to serve some Fizz in a tall Highball glass with a scoop of vanilla Ice Cream"

 

[Puzzicato]

"If its fearfully hot, I like to serve some Fizz in a tall Highball glass with a scoop of vanilla Ice Cream"

That sounds delicious! I've done it with lemon gelato before, but vanilla icecream hadn't occurred to me before. Like a grown-up spider.

 

[Mrs Chaddsley_Corbett]

This book looks pretty good

http://www.vintagefolly.com/the-vintage-tea-party-book-by-angel-adoree-book-review

 

[Marzena]

I have totally embraced the concept of tea as the easiest, most economic and yet mega stylish entertainment. Everything can be made in advance, everything on the table, no need for any last minute touches that can go so bad and ruin your skirt. The only (tiny, insignificant) downside is that it has to be done on one of the weekend days, and then where do you squeeze it between the late brunch and dinner?

 

[chanteuseCarey]

Just finished reading through this thread. Have hosted, cooked for, set up, attended, and designed and thoroughly enjoyed tea parties for pretty much my entire adult life (1'm 53-1/2). Don't ask me how many books, magazines, etc., paper ephemera, supplies, dishes, tea pots, decorative tea items- all about tea and tea parties that I own! Its just too much to count. If I had the funds, I'd own and operate a tea room! With a space for tea dancing! My dining and kitchen interior decor at my previous home looked just like one!

On vacations, I ALWAYS try to look for a place to take tea- even when I have been in England, Italy, Germany, and Turkey.

Here are a few notes, ideas, etc. Please take note of any of my own very personal biases here, as I up front make no apologies. Just have read much on the subject, gone to many places for taking tea, and been doing it myself for lots of years.

Either hand write or make up on your computer a vintage looking invitation. Mail it out to the guests invited, with their name and address and yours handwritten. In this modern age, its fun to receive something in the snail mail, and its also very charmingly vintage. Ask on the invitation for an R.S.V.P. and hold them to it. You should have no qualms about this, ASK them to please be on time. Its common courtesy, and respectful for all that you are doing for this, for them as your guests. Determine the final number of guests that are attending a few days ahead of time. You need to plan your table and the food amount.

Lose the alcohol, folks. Its an afternoon tea party, not cocktails. You'll want a pot of tea of every two to three guests. Have caffiene and non caffienated tea selections available. Use loose tea, not tea bags in your tea pots. No coffee.

Tea plates are small bites; little sandwich pieces (a sandwich cut into triangles, or vertical slices, shaped with a cookie cutter, etc), mini size pastries.
A typical tea party menu could be:

store-bought or home made ginger cookies with lemon curd already available on the table as a starter course while the tea is being brought to the table is a nice touch.

Two or three kinds of sandwiches cut into different shapes on different breads;
egg salad, cucumber with cream cheese of course, even nasturium flowers and leaves with butter on an artisan bread can work!

scones with clotted cream and strawberry or raspberry jam,
perhaps a small quiche or meat item made in puff pastry

For the small dessert plate;
an artisan chocolate from a specialty bakery, a madeleine or home made cookie, a petit four, and a little fruit tartlet is more than plenty

Almost all foods for a tea party can be culled from grocer and specialty bakery, grocers ahead. Make your own scones from scratch or a mix if you have time. In a pinch get them uncooked from a local tea shoppe, and bake the day of the party. Make the sandwiches fresh that day, put them on a platter, and cover them with a dampened tea towel in the frig until the time they will be served. Otherwise the bread will dry out. I ALWAYS buy my petit fours, the idea of making is too time consuming and I don't need the stress. I've had better luck getting them at a specialty grocer (such as Whole Foods) or my local tea shoppe than from a local bakery.

Using depression glass dishes can make for a really fun vintage look, make each place setting a different colour and pattern if you have it. I have 16 place settings of depression glass, of four in four patterns each; one in yellow, one green, one pink and one blue. I have eight depression glass coloured serving pieces, four more different patterns than the place settings, 2 pieces each in the four colours.

I have a few depression glass vases, two art deco period vases, and clear drinking glasses. There was even a pattern that was called 'Tea Room', and I found the pattern in vases on EvilBay.

Flowers need to be there for a nice vintage tea party. And for any tea party, really. I grew over 100 antique and modern rose bushes, so that predominated in my table settings for tea parties. If you have a neighbor with a great front yard flower garden, don't hesitate to ask if you might have some blooms to use for vases for your tea party. I did this, and the neighbors were so delighted that I appreciated their flowers, and gave more than I had hoped for. One time I went to a local florist asking about blooms, and she told me of a nearby field beside the nearby freeway with wildflowers growing. Get creative with containers for flowers other than vases, too- I made 26 arrangements with roses and other flowers for a mother-daughter tea once using my collection of tea pots as vases for the table centerpieces.

If you have vintage table linens, dig them out to use. Iron up those fabric napkins and tablecloths you've collected or inherited, here is the perfect place to show them off! Otherwise, try something fairly neutral as a nice white cotton or linen tablecloth as not to compete for attention with the dishes and flowers.

You really do want to use tea cups and saucers here, not coffee cups or mugs. No paper plates or napkins, no plastic ware. It just doesn't look right otherwise. Separate small fancy dessert plates are great if you've got them. Everything doesn't have to match, mixing it up gives things a playful, spontaneous look. A pink patterned modern or vintage Royal Albert or flea market find tea cup on a new blue patterned saucer with a green patterned small plate inherited from a maiden aunt is a nice surprise to see.

Music? Again, its a tea party, not a tea dance (unless its meant to be one, which is a really delightful thing to put on if you have the space and place, the dancing guests in attendance, and a band for it) nor a nightclub sounding atmosphere you are aiming for. Music should be thought of as being in the background, not as a focal point. The focus is on guests enjoying the food and each other in a lovely, charming, and calm setting- not what tune is currently playing.

If putting on a vintage theme tea, and you have friends that are into vintage attire, please ask the guests to dress appropriate to the occasion. When I hosted a tea in May one year in my backyard garden for a few art deco society friends, all the men and ladies came in warm weather 1930s attire.

Tea parties should be slow paced, and enjoyed leisurely. Plan for enough time for all to relax and enjoy the courses. Two hours is typical for a tea party. The time will go by quickly, really..

The hostess (or host, if their is no hostess) always serves the tea, and typically the food as well to their guests. The guests don't get anything for themselves. So place yourself at the head of the table and be prepared to get up and down as necessary. Same with clearing the dishes. The guests relax, you do the work. If you would like to, and have a friend or even a teenager or two that is willing to do so (offer to feed them, that will usually work!), have them help make the food with you. They can serve the food to your guests, and clear the dishes. At the art deco tea, I had my teenage son and daughter and a male teen friend of my daughter help make the food and get the tables and flowers ready. They had fun time of it, and had good eats!

A fun read about tea rooms in the US in the 1920s is:
Tea at the Blue Lantern Inn; a Social History of the Tea Room Craze in America, by Jan Whitaker

 

[Marzena]

Thank you for this! This is what I lave about the Fedora Lounge: you may get such detailed, hands-on, informed instructions!

 

[chanteuseCarey]

photos:
Art Deco tea party

Gatsby event (a large scale version of a tea party, as always with me!) table setting, with my adjoining wicker family room behind. Mahogany pedestal table and chairs are 1930s. Our Gatsby setup won best big picnic that year- with an engraved silver plated champagne bucket as a prize!

 

[Albert.Tatlock]

delightful, , you all look perfect and the food looks delicious

 

[Late to the Party]

Post's Etiquette from the 20s to the 40s at least (only ones I have) has sections on managing teas and lunches, as well as how to make do if one does not have or cannot hire help for the day.

 

[Stray Cat]

[size=+1]"Teas and Other Afternoon Parties" - Emily Post (1922)[/size]:
(I'm coping & pasting this)

Except at a wedding, the function strictly understood by the word “reception” went out of fashion, in New York at least, during the reign of Queen Victoria, and its survivor is a public or semi-public affair presided over by a committee, and is a serious, rather than a merely social event.
The very word “reception” brings to mind an aggregation of personages, very formal, very dressed up, very pompous, and very learned, among whom the ordinary mortal can not do other than wander helplessly in the labyrinth of the specialist's jargon. Art critics on a varnishing day reception, are sure to dwell on the effect of a new technique, and the comment of most of us, to whom a painting ought to look like a “picture,” is fatal. Equally fatal to meet an explorer and not know where or what he explored; or to meet a celebrated author and not have the least idea whether he wrote detective stories or expounded Taoism. On the other hand it is certainly discouraging after studying up on the latest Cretan excavations in order to talk intelligently to Professor Diggs, to be pigeon-holed for the afternoon beside Mrs. Newmother whose interest in discovery is limited to “a new tooth in baby's head.”
Yet the difference between a reception and a tea is one of atmosphere only, like the difference in furnishing twin houses. One is enveloped in the heavy gloom of the mid-Victorian period, the other is light and alluring in the fashion of to-day.
A “tea,” even though it be formal, is nevertheless friendly and inviting. One does not go in “church” clothes nor with ceremonious manner; but in an informal and every-day spirit, to see one’s friends and be seen by them.

The rest is HERE

 

[Albert.Tatlock]

Mrs Wallis-Simpson in the 1930's mentions "receptions" rather a lot in her letters to her Aunt Bessie,........................... but then again she also mentioned "KT" parties