Time for tea: in celebration of the remarkable craftmanship involved in the making and taking of a cup of tea, Peter Brown tells the extraordinary story of how one of the best-loved beverages was introduced to the Western world

Apollo, April, 2004 by Peter Brown

In the foreground is a marvellous silver kettle on stand that relates quite closely to the earliest surviving example, now in the Norwich Castle Museum collection (Fig. 7). The Norwich kettle has a London mark for 1695 but the stand, with its integrated spirit lamp, was supplied five years later by the London silversmith John East.

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The example shown in the painting sits on an unusual metal stand of naive form with knopped column and tripod feet terminating in fleur-de-lys toes. A more sophisticated example of this arrangement by Thomas Gladwin (1719) is now in the National Museum of Wales.

What is missing from this whole assembly is the presence of a tea canister, or caddy set. There were certainly fine examples available at this time, and as early as 1680 the English silversmiths were producing rectangular canisters engraved with sophisticated designs. (23) The imported redware canisters from the Xising province of China were also of good quality and a few still survive in country-house collections (Fig. 9).

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By the beginning of the eighteenth century, canisters for tea were being housed in chests usually fitted with a stout lock. Jonathan Swift's satire Directions for Servants of 1720 offered some sympathy for the plight of the 'waiting maid':

Two accidents have happened to lessen the Comforts and Profits of your Employment; First, that execrable Custom got among Ladies, of trucking their old Cloaths for China. The Second is, the Invention of small Chests and Trunks, with Lock and Key, wherein they keep the Tea and Sugar, without which it is impossible for a Waiting maid to live: For, by this means, you are forced to buy brown Sugar, and pour Water upon the Leaves, when they have lost all their Spirit and Taste: I cannot contrive any perfect Remedy against either of these two Evils ... Therefore, I fear you must be forced, like the rest of your Sisters, to run in Trust, and pay for it out of your Wages. (24)

The interiors of the lockable chests held canisters for green tea, black tea and sugar (Fig. 10) and some examples like the Bossier family chest at Temple Newsam, Leeds, have a milk jug, twelve spoons, one mote spoon, two bread knives and a pair of sugar tongs to complete the set. The presence of only a single mote spoon among this assembly gives a clear indication of its use by the person in charge of the tea chest, for these spoons have pierced bowls and a long tapered stem (Fig. 11). The bowl is probably used by the hostess to remove 'floaters' from the tea before passing the cup over to the guest, while the long stem cou|d clear the teapot spout of any accumulation of leaves.

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As the century progressed, the tea chest played an ever-increasing part in the cabinetmaker and silversmith's repertoire. In 1763, Chippendale's Director showed six very sophisticated designs for tea chests and these illustrate just how rich and diverse such functional objects could be (Fig. 12).

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