The sugar tongs are small serving utensils used at the table to transfer sugar pieces from the

sugar bowl The Sugar Bowl is an annual American college football bowl game played in New Orleans, Louisiana. Played annually since January 1, 1935, it is tied with the Orange Bowl and Sun Bowl as the second-oldest bowl games in the country, surpassed only ...

to the

tea cup A teacup is a cup for drinking tea. It generally has a small handle that may be grasped with the thumb and one or two fingers. It is typically made of a ceramic material and is often part of a set which is composed of a cup and a matching sauc ...

s. The tongs appeared at the end of the 17th century, and were very popular by 1800, with half of the British households owning them. The decline of the formal

tea party A tea party is a social gathering event, typically held in the afternoon, featuring the consumption of tea and light refreshments. Social tea drinking rituals are observed in many cultures worldwide, both historically and in the present day. A ...

led to the disappearance of the sugar tongs, in the 21st century they are considered an oddity at the table in their original role, but had acquired a new meaning: the tongs now represent

Englishness According to some scholars, a national identity of the English as the people or ethnic group dominant in England can be traced to the Anglo-Saxon period. For Lindy Brady and Marc Morris, Bede's ''Ecclesiastical History of the English People'' and ...

(somewhere along with

Miss Marple Miss Jane Marple is a fictional character in Agatha Christie's crime novels and short stories. Miss Marple lives in the village of St Mary Mead and acts as an amateur consulting detective. Often characterised as an elderly spinster, she is one ...

). Also, these tongs still can be used to serve small candy,

string beans Green beans are young, unripe fruits of various cultivars of the common bean (''Phaseolus vulgaris''), although immature or young pods of the runner bean (''Phaseolus coccineus''), yardlong bean ( ''Vigna unguiculata'' subsp. ''sesquipedalis' ...

, slices of cucumber, celery sticks.

Terminology

Terminology is inconsistent. Egan Mew follows the evolution of the utensil through: * ''sugar nippers''. While these tools shared the name with sturdy

sugar nips Sugar nips are a large pair of pincers with sharp blades, designed to cut sugar from a block. Before the introduction of granulated and cube A cube or regular hexahedron is a three-dimensional space, three-dimensional solid object in geometr ...

(and were also scissor-like), they were very different in nature: the latter were used to cut pieces off the

sugarloaf A sugarloaf was the usual form in which refined sugar was produced and sold until the late 19th century, when granulated and cube sugars were introduced. A tall cone with a rounded top was the end product of a process in which dark molasses, ...

in the kitchen, while the former were used at the table, were decorative and frequently made of silver; David Shlosberg asserts that this term was not contemporaneously applied to this utensil and the term "tea tongs" was actually used instead in the 18th century. * ''sugar bows'' with highly decorative handles appear in 1750s (Shlosberg says the displacement started in the early 1770s) for a short time; * ''sugar tongs'' with more plain designs appeared in the 18th century and gradually evolved into "bold, bad design" of the 19th century. By the early 20th century, the "fashion ... has dismissed the sugar-tongs from society".

Construction

The early tongs were scissor-like, occasionally in fancy shapes like storks with long beaks or puppets grabbing the sugar with their hands. The majority at the time were "sugar bows" with two elaborately decorated hands with

openwork In art history, architecture, and related fields, openwork or open-work is any decorative technique that creates holes, piercings, or gaps through a solid material such as metal, wood, stone, pottery, cloth, leather, or ivory. Such techniques ha ...

that were joined by a flexible arc hammered into a spring, so that the hands opened when no pressure was applied to the arms. The latter part of the reign of George II and early reign of

George III George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 173829 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland, Ireland from 25 October 1760 until his death in 1820. The Acts of Union 1800 unified Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain and ...

exhibited a very large variety of patterns pierced and chased onto the tongs. In the late

Georgian era The Georgian era was a period in British history from 1714 to , named after the House of Hanover, Hanoverian kings George I of Great Britain, George I, George II of Great Britain, George II, George III and George IV. The definition of the Geor ...

piercing popularity had declined, and the thongs were made to match the contemporary spoon designs (for example, with the fiddle pattern). Stork sugar tongs.png,

Stork Storks are large, long-legged, long-necked wading birds with long, stout bills. They belong to the family Ciconiidae, and make up the order Ciconiiformes . Ciconiiformes previously included a number of other families, such as herons and ibise ...

-shaped sugar tongs (Great Britain, 18th century). When opened, the bodies of the birds reveal a baby inside, illustrating the legend of the stork delivering babies Sugar Tongs MET 97908.jpg, Scissor-shaped "nippers" Sugar Tongs MET 71052.jpg, Sugar bows Zuckerzange.jpg, Sugar tongs in a sugar bowl

References

Sources

* * * * * * {{cite book , last=Shlosberg , first=David , title=Eighteenth Century Silver Tea Tongs: An Illustrated Guide for Collectors , publisher=Shlosberg , year=2004 , url=http://www.silverteatongs.com/ , access-date=2023-10-07 Serving utensils

Tongs Tongs are a type of tool used to grip and lift objects instead of holding them directly with hands. There are many forms of tongs adapted to their specific use. Design variations include resting points so that the working end of the tongs d ...

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