author
Rodris Roth
A Smithsonian curator and historian of everyday life, she explored how ordinary objects and social rituals reveal the texture of early American culture. Her best-known work on tea drinking turns tables, cups, and customs into a vivid window on the 18th century.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Best known for Tea Drinking in 18th-Century America: Its Etiquette and Equipage, she wrote with a curator’s eye for the telling detail. Rather than treating history as a list of dates, her work shows how people lived day to day—what they drank, how they entertained, and what their household objects meant in social life.
Rodris Roth worked at the Smithsonian and became a specialist in American furnishings, cultural history, and domestic life collections. Smithsonian records identify her as an associate curator in the Museum of History and Technology, and later materials connect her with the National Museum of American History’s social history and domestic life work.
Her writing remains appealing because it makes material culture feel lively and human. In her hands, subjects like tea tables, floor coverings, and household customs become a way to understand manners, status, and daily experience in early America.