Bittersweet Chocolate, Tea, Coffee
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2025-05
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Hamilton Gallery
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School of Culture and Communication
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Martin, M. (2025). Bittersweet Chocolate, Tea, Coffee. (1), Hamilton Gallery.
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Abstract
These days, it is hard to imagine starting the day without partaking of a cup of freshly brewed coffee, a hot cup of tea – or in some parts of the world, such as Spain – a cup of hot chocolate. The consumption of these caffeinated hot beverages is such an integral part of modern Western – and, progressively, global – food culture that it is hard to conceive of life without them. But all three drinks, unknown in the Western world prior to the late sixteenth century, are non-European in origin and have long histories of consumption practices in their native cultural contexts – Asia, the Middle East and Mesoamerica respectively.
When each of these beverages was first brought to Europe, they were viewed with curiosity, but also suspicion. They were bitter, strong, and initially treated as medicines. And as was the case with much materia medica in the early modern world, many people feared that these drinks might be dangerous. The gradual acceptance of these caffeinated beverages in Europe triggered profound transformations in drinking and dining practices, social customs, attitudes towards health, commerce and manufacturing, and even national identity. Together with sugar, which was consumed with all three beverages, the quest to source these new commodities was a powerful impetus for colonial expansion by European states, leading to untold social disruption and human suffering in many parts of the globe. At the same time, the necessity for specialised wares to facilitate the preparation and consumption of the beverages stimulated innovation in European industry, especially the realm of ceramic manufacture, creating new products which were then traded across the globe.
This exhibition, and accompanying publication, explores the remarkable story of how these three beverages came to be so deeply incorporated into the contemporary practices of our everyday lives. Attention is paid to the rituals for consuming these drinks that developed in the West, serving to Europeanise them and strip them of their worrying foreign associations. For example, the practice of adding milk and sugar served to combat the bitterness and strength of all three hot beverages, rendering them less threatening, but also driving the rapid growth of sugar consumption in eighteenth-century Europe. This resulted in the intensification of sugar cultivation on plantations in South America and the Caribbean where enslaved African labourers suffered and died in inhuman conditions. New vessels were created to facilitate the drinks’ preparation and consumption, and these containers helped to shape both the behaviours of the people using them, and the meaning of their contents. A close examination of the diverse styles of decoration employed on European wares for the consumption of chocolate, tea and coffee will show how these were not simple ornament, but served to suggest that the contents were wholesome, safe and, above all, fully Westernised.
The rituals that developed around the consumption of chocolate, tea and coffee continued to function as markers of social standing, class and national loyalties throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century – for example, the tradition of English teatime, and the German ritual of ‘Kaffee und Kuchen’. Technological innovation at the end of the twentieth century saw marked changes in these consumption practices for the first time in centuries – for example, the advent of home espresso makers has virtually done away with the coffee pot as a standard component of a table service. Yet the political dimension of coffee, tea and chocolate as global commodities remains just as important today as it did in the eighteenth century, with these commercial crops often remaining dangerously entangled in power networks involving child labour, worker exploitation and environmental degradation. These concerns leave us with an enduring question: How much did, and does, a cup of coffee (or tea, or chocolate) really cost?