Gaffer's Tea Set

We used to call my paternal grandmother "Gaffer," a corruption of "Granny from Africa", which is what my English cousins called her. Gaffer was a gentle, kind, beautiful old lady with great blue eyes and soft white curls.

Her favorite tea service was a pink and gold Royal Tuscan set that I always adored. My Aunt Ann remembers, at the age of seven in 1947,  buying it with Gaffer at Henshilwoods, a family owned department store in Claremont, Cape Town (I believe Henshilwoods closed in 1998.) Apparently Gaffer loved it and would always produce it with great pride when she served a formal tea.

To me, the service has always had a surreal, fairytale quality, although I know people who find it too chintzy, too gaudy, and too overdone. After my grandmother developed dementia, it came to my family and remained, unused, in a cabinet in our home. I would often go and look at it. I would take down a cup and stare at the soft baby pink and gold and at the beautiful daisies painted on it. When Craig and I married, my mother brought it over from South Africa and gave it to me as a wedding gift from Gaffer. I have always loved and treasured it. I feel Gaffer whispers to me through it. It conveys to me her kindness, her elegance, and her gentle nurturing spirit.

Initially, I had six cups and saucers, six little plates, a milk jug, a sugar basin, and a cake platter. Later, to my intense joy, I found more of the same pattern on eBay in the UK. This set contained a coffee pot or hot water holder, another six cups and saucers, six plates, a regular-sized sugar basin and milk jug, and six tiny and dainty demitasse cups and saucers. When Laura and Emma were little, we'd sometimes sit down to tea and scones, and they and their dolls would each get a demitasse cup of tea.

I was admiring the set last Friday when, to my horror, I dropped a cup and broke it. I felt I'd committed sacrilege. Thankfully, the cup was from the set I bought online, and not from Gaffer's original service, which has remained intact for over 70 years. It's very hard to find additional items for this pattern. Replacements.com has nothing. However,  I looked on eBay, and, to my surprise, saw six cups and saucers for sale! I have ordered them, and now we should have enough that I won't feel the need to be so cautious about using this set.

My plan is to serve "high tea" with this service once a week from now on. Laura and I fell in love with cream teas when we were in British Columbia in 2016, and I want to revive that beautiful tradition in our home. To make the "tea" a full dinner, I plan to add a number of savory items such as finger sandwiches, tiny quiches, and other miniature hors d'oeuvres, such as miniature vegatarian  sausage rolls (so easy to make with Morning Star breakfast sausages and puff pastry) and maybe even miniature pizzas, and then we'll have scones with jam and cream for dessert. I'll have to figure out some salad/veggie items that work with this meal, maybe salad wrapped up in a lettuce leaf and served as finger food.