21/05/2026
If Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea had existed in Elsie Curtin’s time, it’s easy to imagine that she would have hosted a special one herself in the family’s modest home in Cottesloe, Perth.
Known for her warmth and generous hospitality, Elsie was the wife of wartime Prime Minister John Curtin and loved to serve tea and coffee to guests on pretty china, perhaps accompanied by her famous scones, which her daughter fondly remembered as “beautiful.”
This charming Chintz “Hydrangea” coffee service, c.1930s was probably part of a larger set that was owned and used by Elsie and possibly also her widowed mother Annie Needham who lived with the family.
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📷 1: Chintz “Hydrangea” coffee set (partial), James Kent Ltd, Collection: National Trust (2010.3 a-l); 2 and 3: The coffee set on temporary display at The Old Observatory; 4: The Curtin family, 1942 (courtesy the John Curtin family, JCPML 00376/34)