Tea service: putting one together for entertaining, from 4 to 50 guests

What do you need in a tea set for entertaining?

A tea set brings together the tableware used to prepare, pour and drink tea: the teapot, the cups and their saucers, and often a milk jug, a sugar bowl, spoons and a strainer. When entertaining, two questions come before the decoration: how many cups to serve in a single pour, and how to keep the tea hot for as long as your guests are at the table.

So we start from the needs of a gathering: one or more teapots of the right capacity, enough cups, a tray to carry everything, and a teapot warmer or an insulated teapot to last the occasion. Choosing the teapot alone, material by material, is covered in detail in our guide to choosing your teapot; here, we build the whole set around the number of guests.

How many cups and which teapot for 4, 8 or 12 people?

Allow 200 ml per cup: this is the measure on which our tea pages base their dosage. Four 200 ml cups require about 0.8 litres of tea, which means a teapot of 0.8 to 0.9 l. Beyond six guests, plan for two teapots: the Dunoon 1.2 l Teapot serves six 200 ml cups, and two teapots also let you offer two different teas.

For cups, the 'Sven' Tea Cups, 200 ml set brings together four stoneware cups, coordinated rather than identical, in gift packaging: two sets are enough for eight place settings. The 'Pucheng' Porcelain Tea Cups set also contains four cups, in porcelain. For a more generous serving, Dunoon's Islay Cup & Saucer · 0.35 l comes with its saucer, in Dovedale Strawberry, Wild Garden Rose or Busy Bees designs.

A note on cast iron teapots: on the Arare teapot (0.6 l, 1 l or 1.4 l, in black, red, blue, green or plum depending on size) as on the Natsumi teapot (1 l, in black or red), the stated volume is the teapot's external volume, not its usable capacity. A 1.4 l Arare therefore serves fewer than seven 200 ml cups: choose the size above your calculation. Our guide to the cast iron teapot explains how to prepare it before its first use.

Porcelain, glass, cast iron or bone china: which tea set to choose?

Porcelain is the most versatile choice for entertaining: neutral in taste, it does not retain aromas from one brew to the next, so the same Ceylon Porcelain Teapot can serve a black tea and then a herbal infusion without one affecting the other. Its gilded rim and gift packaging also make it a teapot to give.

Glass shows the colour of the liquor and the leaves as they unfurl. The 'Finn' Glass Teapot, 0.9 l has a lid and a stainless steel micro-filter that holds back the leaves. Cast iron, for its part, retains heat thanks to its thick walls: it is the teapot for a table where tea is savoured slowly, over several cups.

Bone china, a fine English porcelain made with bone ash, is recognisable by its whiteness and delicacy, almost translucent against the light. Dunoon teapots are cast in this material in Stone, Staffordshire, and delivered in a gift box: the 0.75 l Teapot in Wild Garden or Secret Wood designs for a small table, the 1.2 l Teapot in the Wild Garden design for six cups.

For an oriental-style service, the 4 Oriental Glass Cups, 50 ml serve four people per round; a 0.9 l teapot fills them several times. They suit a green tea just as well as a mint rooibos such as Rouge Casablanca, which is naturally caffeine-free.

How do you keep tea hot throughout the gathering?

Start by removing the leaves at the end of the steeping time: tea kept warm on its leaves continues to infuse. Details on serving a large table, and the order of teas over the course of a meal, can be found in our guide tea and the Christmas meal. Then, three items take over.

• The teapot warmer. The Stainless Steel Teapot Warmer, 140 mm in diameter, keeps the teapot at temperature with a tealight placed underneath; it suits most glass, porcelain or cast iron teapots. The Glass Teapot Warmer works in the same way, reveals the glow of the flame and maintains the heat without bringing the tea back to the boil. Place the warmer on a stable surface and never leave the candle burning unattended.
• The insulated teapot. The Mariage Frères Art Déco 1930 Teapot has a double wall that keeps the infusion hot for longer. It comes with a filter, to be removed at the end of the steeping time, and is available in 600 ml and 900 ml in white and chrome or black and chrome, and in 1.3 l in black and chrome.
• The double-walled cup. The 'Arvid' Double-Walled Glass Cup, 220 ml keeps tea hot for longer while the outer wall stays comfortable to hold. The Lyn Double-Walled Glass, in borosilicate, approximately 250 ml, comes in Eucalyptus, Cherry Blossom and Ginkgo designs; it is hand wash only.

How much tea should you plan for a gathering of 20 to 50 guests?

For a gathering, start with two 200 ml cups per guest, then adjust according to how long it lasts. Marco Polo, Esprit de Noël and Rouge Casablanca share the same measure on their pages: 2.5 g of leaves or one cotton muslin per 200 ml of water at 95 °C, 5 minutes' steeping. A box of 30 cotton muslins weighs 75 g and therefore serves 30 cups.

Cotton muslins simplify serving at a large gathering: one per cup, removed in a single movement at the end of the steeping time. Esprit de Noël in a box of 30 cotton muslins and Marco Polo in a box of 30 cotton muslins lend themselves well to a festive gathering; Rouge Casablanca in a box of 30 cotton muslins, naturally caffeine-free, is for guests who avoid caffeine in the evening. For other teas, the measure and temperature appear on each page, and our guide to steeping times and temperatures gathers them type by type.

The tray and ready-to-give sets

The tray brings the set together and carries it in one trip from the kitchen to the living room. The 'Dana' Glass Set with Tray includes one: a glass teapot, four double-walled cups and a wooden tray. It is a complete set for four, to lay out as it is or to give to someone who often entertains.

Other sets arrive wrapped, ready to give. The 'Morpho' 3-Piece Tea Set pairs a teapot and two porcelain cups in gift packaging, for a service for two. The 'Sven' Tea Cups set and the 'Pucheng' Porcelain Tea Cups set complement a teapot you already own. From Dunoon, the 0.75 l Teapot, the 1.2 l Teapot and the Islay Cup & Saucer are each presented in an individual gift box. To add a tea to the parcel, our guide to putting together a tea gift set takes you through it step by step.