Brass Copper Tea Coffee

From cupolas to cookware and fine art to filaments, copper metal has been used in so many ways since prehistoric times. Today, antique, new and vintage copper coffee tables, mirrors, lamps and other furniture and decor can bring a warm metallic flourish to interiors of any kind.

In years spanning 8,700 BC (the time of the first-known copper pendant) until roughly 3,700 BC, it may have been the only metal people knew how to manipulate.

Valuable deposits of copper were first extracted on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus around 4,000 BC — well before Europe’s actual Bronze Age (copper + tin = bronze). Tiny Cyprus is even credited with supplying all of Egypt and the Near East with copper for the production of sophisticated currency, weaponry, jewelry and decorative items.

In the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, master painters such as Leonardo da Vinci, El Greco, Rembrandt and Jan Brueghel created fine works on copper. (Back then, copper-based pigments, too, were all the rage.) By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, decorative items like bas-relief plaques, trays and jewelry produced during the Art Deco, Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau periods espoused copper. These became highly valuable and collectible pieces and remain so today.

Copper’s beauty, malleability, conductivity and versatility make it perhaps the most coveted nonprecious metal in existence. In interiors, polished copper begets an understated luxuriousness, and its reflectivity casts bright, golden and earthy warmth seldom realized in brass or bronze. (Just ask Tom Dixon.)

Outdoors, its most celebrated attribute — the verdigris patina it slowly develops from exposure to oxygen and other elements — isn’t the only hue it takes. Architects often refer to shades of copper as russet, ebony, plum and even chocolate brown. And Frank Lloyd Wright, Renzo Piano and Michael Graves have each used copper in their building projects.

Find antique, new and vintage copper furniture and decorative objects on 1stDibs.

Ready to serve high tea and brunch for your family and friends? Start with the right antique, new or vintage tea set.

Tea is a multicultural, multinational beverage and isn’t confined to any particular lifestyle or age group. It has humble beginnings, and one of its best-known origin stories places the first cups of tea in 2700 B.C. in China, where it was recognized for its medicinal properties. Jump ahead to 17th-century England, when Chinese tea began to arrive at ports in London. During the early 1800s, tea became widely affordable, and the concept of teatime took shape all over England. Today, more than 150 million people reportedly drink tea daily in the United States.

Early tea drinkers enjoyed their beverage in a bowl, and English potters eventually added a handle to the porcelain bowls so that burning your fingers became less of a teatime hazard. With the rise in the popularity of teatime, tea sets, also referred to as tea service, became a hot commodity.

During Queen Victoria’s reign, teakettles and coffeepots were added to tea services that were quite large — indeed, small baked goods were served with your drink back then, and a tea set could include many teacups and saucers, a milk pot and other accessories.

During the early 1920s, a sterling-silver full tea service and tray designed by Tiffany & Co. might include a hot-water kettle on a stand, a coffeepot, teapot, a creamer with a small lip spout, a waste bowl and a bowl for sugar, which the British were stirring into tea as early as the 18th century.

But you don’t have to limit your tea set to Victorian or Art Deco styles — shake up teatime with an artful contemporary service. If the bold porcelain cups and saucers by Italian brand Seletti are too unconventional for your otherwise subdued tea circle, find antique services on 1stDibs from Japan, France and other locales as well as vintage mid-century modern tea sets and neoclassical designs.