FC2Video

This film teaches the budding post-war typical American family housewife how to impress her friends and neighbors with the amount of “caring and consideration” she can display by setting a beautiful tea table with creative tea party ideas. A bombastic male narrator describes and explains while the footage shows an older woman instructing a younger one in the art of how to set a table for a tea part, choosing a tablecloth, arranging a floral centerpiece, acquiring tea party supplies, placing candles and dishes, and arranging tea sandwiches and napkins. A painstaking attention to detail really shines through in this film, which shows many classic pictures of a 1940’s formal dining arrangement and rules of etiquette. This cult of domesticity and social conformity is a hallmark of the 1940s.