Sugar tongs 1797

This is a set of sugar tongs created by Paul Revere, the famed silversmith of the Revolutionary era. These tongs and the tea set they accompany were made in a period where social rituals were hardening around class, gender, and race. Tea drinking in colonial America was not just a casual habit; it was a performance of status, a display of gentility heavily laden with the weight of colonialism and the stain of slavery. Revere, a patriot deeply involved in the fight for independence, paradoxically profited from crafting objects that embodied the very social hierarchy his revolution sought to dismantle. Consider the sugar these tongs were meant to serve. That sugar came at the cost of enslaved labor in the West Indies, a bitter truth sweetened for the palates of the elite. These objects ask us to consider how deeply intertwined personal luxury and political ideals could be, and how revolutionary rhetoric could coexist with complicity in unjust systems. They invite us to reflect on the complex layers of identity and history embedded within something as seemingly simple as a cup of tea.