This delicate tea urn stand with a decorative urn has a small pull-out shelf to sit a teacup and saucer on.

The drinking of tea and coffee became highly fashionable in Britain in the 18^th century. It was initially a luxury of the rich, but the mass production of sugar by enslaved labour cheapened prices and consumption of sugar increased dramatically throughout the population.

However, as the British public’s awareness of the horrors of slavery grew, sugar boycotts became one of the ways abolitionists campaigned against slavery. In 1791, thousands of pamphlets encouraged people to boycott sugar produced by enslaved labour. Around 300,000 people abandoned sugar, with sales dropping by a third to a half.  Another mass boycott occurred in the 1820s.