A Portrait of society from the 18th Century

Men wore a knee-length jacket and waistcoat, breeches, tie, wig and a wide-brimmed hat.

Women wore bodices with embroidery and overskirts, and decorative front panels and small aprons. They wore their hair up à la fontange, and they had a fan in their hands.

Everyone wore silk stockings and...

...heeled shoes.

The demand for highly prized Chinese porcelain and luxury tableware to adorn the tables served to adapt to the new culinary habits and resulted in a variety of new objects:

Centrepieces,...

...candle holders,

...saucers (to serve glasses of water, ice-cream, cups, pastries, etc.)

...and glass and metal objects such as the introduction of the three-pronged fork.

This was the beginning of gastronomy as we know it today.

The arrival of new foods such as tea, coffee and chocolate required new containers: all the privileged houses would have teapots, coffee pots and vessels for hot chocolate.

Chocolate, from America, played a prominent role, to the point that a new object was designed to drink it: the mancerina as it was called in Spain.

Invented in the court of the Marquis of Mancera, Viceroy of Peru, in the mid 17th century, it held the cup containing the hot chocolate, preventing it from falling off the plate.