Tea urns

Usage examples of samovars.

That one was equally vast, and in its middle was a table the size of the Florilegium's pista—a ring of tables, actually, linen-clothed and crowded with sterling silver samovars, crystal decanters, stacks of gold-inlaid porcelain tableware, snowy serviettes, silver flatware, and salvers and tureens and bowls displaying what appeared to be every finest sort of viand that ever came from a kitchen.

All else remained the same: the grand piano swathed in sea otter, the swinging candelabra burning in hundreds of flames, the regal collection of samovars, sending off dull metal glitters from velvet-draped recesses.

Inside them, those coachmen had lit the burners under samovars and now, and at every subsequent intermission, served hot tea to their masters and mistresses, when they came out swathed in their minks and sables and martens.