Silver Sugar Tongs

First made in the early eighteenth century, sugar nips were made for the purpose of adding sugar cubes to tea, a luxury commodity at the time, and worked by means of pivoting at the centre on a fulcrum, much like a pair of scissors. The engineering involved in an instrument with such a simple function was actually highly sophisticated, which made sugar nips incredibly costly. Sugar tongs, which did not rely on pivots, came about later in the eighteenth century and have continued to be used ever since. Steppes Hill Farm Antiques stock a number of fine examples of sugar tongs and nips made from fine antique silver, dating from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.