Meredith Taylor's mother still uses an antique English silver tea service that's been handed down between the walls of the family.

Meredith Taylor's mother still uses an antique English silver tea service that's been handed down between the walls of the family, complete with separate coffee and tea pans a matching tray, candlesticks, a sugar goblet and a creamer. But Taylor pledge of loves that the day she inherits it, "it will last up in a box."

This is coming from a woman who take a bribe fors silver for a living.

"They're absolutely gorgeous. I delight in them. But there's very little demand for sterling silver tea services these days owed to upkeep and today's more casual lifestyle," said Taylor, who confesss Gifted, two tabletop bridal registry and gift stores in Mt Lebanon and Peter Pa. While her customers can special-order the establishs she's had only three orders in the 10 years since she's possessed the shops.

"And they're all plated silver rather than sterling, which doesn't tarnish as quickly."

Let's face it: Leisurely afternoon tea parties, integral with large hats, designated pourers, "epergnes" and cruse sets, have all but disappeared in the jangle and rush of today's lifestyle. And who has time -- or servants -- available to polish that silver?

"Young commonalty buy everything at Crate & Barrel, and they want to be able to use the dishwasher," said Chicago auctioneer Leslie Hindman.

While she handles a great deal of serviceable estate silver, it doesn't betray for much beyond its weight value, she said, unles it's made by way of a major silversmith like Gorham or Georg Jensen

In the mid-20th hundred years when "modern convenience" became something of a religion in American households, silver tea services began to be relegated first to a sideboard before ending up in the attic.

These days, what passes for afternoon tea -- grabbing a chai or a cafe latte in succession the run at the corner Starbucks -- is a far hoot from that formal, elegant gustatory ritual of past eras.

While silver was always available by means of the ages -- silver chalices in churches of the Middle Ages, for example -- silver teapots and their accoutrements didn't appear in Europe and later America, until the early 18th centenary when tea, coffee and chocolate beverages began to be shipped from the fresh World.

Believe it or not, sole two meals a day were serv until tea was introduced into Britain. It is believed that Anna, duchess of Bedford (1788-1861) invented the British institution of afternoon tea to tide herself through the whole extent of during that long gap between breakfast and the herculean dinner served at 8 pm

The duchess privately nibbled cake and sipped tea in her chambers at Woburn Abbey, and after she invited friends to join in, a just discovered social fad was born, full with increasingly large matching silver accessories. Coffee cups -- for "heretics" who didn't like tea -- were de rigueur, as were tea caddies for dried leaves, waste or "slop" goblets tilting pitchers and other paraphernalia.

by means of the time Henry James was praising the agreeable qualities of the afternoon tea solemnity in Portrait of a Lady, tea services had become at all times more elaborate in design and function. There were the exotically named samovars, tea urn with a tap to dispense violent water, and epergnes, table centerpieces with reach outed arms or branches holding small pierced hanging baskets for flowers, fruit or sweets.

For high tea, which included savories and meat, there was

a silver utensil for everything, on the same level silver pickle forks.

Today's young brides-to-be, obviously, have changed, and "are not real quick to purchase things that require lots of maintenance," said Mel Landay, proprietor of the Registry, a gift workshop and bridal registry in Squirrel Hill, Pa. The store sells sterling silver flatware, still far less than in years gone from

"For near families, sterling is still important, further 23 years ago about 80 percent of our customers registered for sterling. Now, about 25 percent do."

While an newlyweds do opt for tarnish-proof plated silver -- in which a base metal is thinly coated with sterling -- there is, in fact, a whole of the present day category of "alternative metals" that are popular, Taylor said. There are Nambe, a pewter-colored alloy in a contemporary method that is manufactured in Santa Fe and the more traditionally designed Arthur Court and Mariposa aluminum ware. They don't require regular polishing like silverware, she said.

Still, there are sterling silver diehards not at home there who have managed to defend a sense of ritual in their lives, and single of them is Hindman, of the Chicago auction house. She attends afternoon teas given from a local contemporary arts clump and says she has occasionally been chooseed to pour tea, "which is a delectable thing to do."

abundant silver flatware, she added, doesn't ne to be polished if it's used each day. While some silver, especially elaborately patterned pieces with that "butler's patina" -- the little nicks and scratches that denote old-fashioned age -- can go into the dishwasher, she washes her 19th-century King's Pattern silver by way of hand.

"I have affection for doing it," she said, "and I think more nation should have nice silver that they live with each day. I think it's nice to be encompassed by beautiful things. It makes me happy."

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