Tea and coffee

Yinka Shonibare Plate, Yinka Shonibare. Small plate. Fine bone china tea set. Limited edition. The artist has used a combination of historical text and imagery from the Tate archive to create a unique and beautiful tea set.

One of Yinka Shonibare’s most celebrated work is ‘Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle’ commissioned for Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth in 2010 (using African textiles instead of plain canvas, for the billowing sails). Shonibare's West African heritage has been at the heart of his work since he started exhibiting in 1988, when he began using ‘Dutch-wax' dyed fabrics, commonly found in Western Africa, both for wall-mounted works (as pseudo paintings) and for sculpted figures. Generally perceived as ‘authentic', such materials were used by Shonibare as a way of deconstructing the more complex histories that determine these and other images of ethnicity. Fusing painting, sculpture, craft and costume design, his work has been impossible to classify by medium alone. In 1999 he was nominated for the Citibank Photography Award on the basis of ‘Diary of a Victorian Dandy’, loosely based on Hogarth's Rake's Progress. This work not only reflects on his own ethnicity in a multi-racial society, but also comments on class distinctions, on popular British taste for period costume dramas and British nostalgia. Shonibare lives and works in London (born 1962).

Tate galleries are renowned for holding the world’s finest collection of British Art, from 1500 to the present day, and a leading collection of International Modern and Contemporary Art. Originally founded in 1897, Tate is now made up of four galleries: Tate Britain (1897) Tate Liverpool (1988) Tate St Ives(1993) and the iconic Tate Modern (2000). Tate produces exclusive merchandise for their exhibitions as well as commissioning artists and designers to create wide array of unique products ranging from greeting cards to jewellery, including homeware, t-shirts, art materials and textiles. Tate is also a leading publisher on the visual arts, publishing its own award-winning books since 1911. Along with its range of books on art, they also publish innovative and creative illustrated books for children and adults. All profits from the merchandise and publishing go to support the galleries in their ambition to increase the public knowledge, understanding and enjoyment of art.