Even into the 1830s, sugar was the backbone of the British economy in the western part of the empire (aka, the West Indies, aka, the former slave colonies, aka, the triangle trade, and so on and so forth, nasty little piece of history, but yeah), until it was replaced by cotton and the mills and cheap works in the industrial north of England. As such, ornate sugar bowls were a must on every table that was well enough to do to have sugar on it – even the lower middle class tables that were just scraping by. If you had a good sugar bowl, you were high enough in the world to not be tomorrow’s trash. Sad, but true. This is an example of a fairly middle to upper-middle class sugar bowl – it definitely wouldn’t have graced a ranking aristocrat’s table, but it would have been enough for his servants’ hall.