Tea and Tea Collections in America that Started a Revolution

18th Century America had established social customs and code of manners about tea and the distinctive furnishings. Tea was expensive and it was delegated to the upper classes, therefore it was a status symbol. A great hostess would make and serve the tea, and guests were supposed to be adept at proper social chitchat. Furniture also played a role in the formation of fashionable tea drinking; a hostess would have to own at least one tea table and several chairs to pull off an adequately formal tea for an intimate group of friends. It was the equivalent of a classy cocktail party today.

Pride was taken in a fashionable tea table with all the tea equipage (all the necessary equipment for a particular purpose). The scarcity of tea from the Orient along with the expense, plus the costly paraphernalia to serve the tea, left the American prosperous and governing classes to consume it. These upper class American homes would have owned a silver teapot, a silver creamer (aka cream jug), porcelain teacups with saucers, a tea caddy with a silver tea caddy spoon, a sugar container and sugar tongs, along with a biscuit box/barrel to hold sweets. In addition to the tea table, there was a need for a tea kettle in the kitchen to boil the water.

Beyond the expense of tea and related equipage, another thing controlled tea in America until 1774; the British Parliament in 1767 imposed the Townsend Act that taxed tea and indirectly restricted the use of tea in America. The act was not strictly enforced by the British until 1773, resulting in the famous Boston Tea Party. Other trade restrictions on the colonies kept a lid on the amount of Chinese porcelain Americans were able to import. The frustrated wealthy who could have afforded the china deeply desired its fashionable qualities, which outshone other ceramics coming from England or Holland (Fig.1). 

Gilles Brochard in his "Time for Tea" essay writes: An alarmed East India Company had the tax lowered, but this was not enough to cool tempers.  On 16 December 1773, patriots from Saint Andrew's Masonic Lodge in Boston dressed up as Mohawk Indians and boarded three of the company's ships. They threw three hundred and forty chests of tea into the harbor.  The incident unleashed English reprisals.  But such actions merely triggered other tea parties, ultimately leading to the battle of Bunker Hill and the Declaration of Independence in 1776.   It was indeed tea and tea equipage that started a revolution.

The China trade increased dramatically after the 1776 Revolution as America developed its own trading networks. It was more commonplace for New England and Southern families to now have tea set collections. In other words, the American merchant fleet went straight to China and imported directly, increasing tea and porcelain imports, and reducing the costs of these products dramatically. Yet, tea was still out of reach for most Americans at this time.

Due to the cost of tea, it needed to be stored securely leading to the design of tea caddies with locks and keys controlled by the matron of the house. The first wooden caddies were made in England in the mid-18th century, then they started to be constructed in the colonies.  These early tea caddies were cube shaped and held only one variety of tea, due to tea availability in the market place  (Fig. 2).  Originally, caddies or canisters were made from porcelain from the Orient, England and Holland, and years later from tortoise shell, pewter, brass and silver.

             

Fig 1:   Early Chinese porcelain export ware, teacup and saucer in the Imari style.  Note:  At this time teacups did not have handles (Left).   

Fig 2:  Tea-Caddy, English Plane Wood Tea Caddy with Holly or Satin Wood Banding,  and Paterae on lid; Paterae is a flat, oval ornament inlaid cameo like plaque.  Circa 1780 (Right).                                                         

                                                         

Figs 3 & 4:  New England Regency Mahogany Tea Caddy with sawtooth inlay banding and a top center paterae with an inlaid Thistle.  The interior photo shows cross-banding tea container lids with ivory pull buttons.  This tea caddy was made after green and black tea was imported to America, demonstrated by the two compartments within the caddy (Above).                                                      

Ultimately, wood craftsmen made caddies using mahogany, rosewood and other decorative timbers, often inlaid with ebony or brass. Wooden tea caddies had the advantage of being able to be fitted with locks to keep the valuable tea leaves secure, and were usually lined in tin or lead to keep the tea fresh. Later tea caddies took on what was known as the Sarcophagus shaped caddies (Figs. 5 & 7).  These popular caddies contained two or more internal compartments fitted with removable lids. The lids had tiny turned knobs made of either matching wood or ivory (Figs. 3 & 6). The locks on caddies were expensive and were only incorporated into superior pieces of furniture, such as bookcases, wardrobes or gentlemen’s presses (Figs. 4 & 7).

            

   

Figs. 5 & 7:  Two Sarcophagus Tea Caddies are  picture here.   Fig. 5: A Birdseye Maple European Sarcophagus Style Tea Caddy.  Fig. 6:  Interior with vintage green and gold Victorian fabric. 

Fig. 7: Left above a Rosewood English Tea Caddy with Brass Fittings - Lock and Feet - in the Sarcophagus Style with wood beaded center top trim, Circa - 1860.  

Note:  The term caddy derives from kati, a Malay word for a measurement of approximately a pound and a third.

Tea prices declined in England after 1830, transforming the beverage from a status symbol to a household staple. It was about this time that England developed a larger tea caddy outfitted with two receptacles inside, one for green tea and the other for black tea (Fig. 3 & 6). These caddies highly crafted were status symbols intended to be displayed on tea tables alongside the other tea equipage, tea caddy spoons (Fig. 8) and sugar tongs. Sugar, like tea, was an equally expensive commodity.

On a fundamental level, depending on the type of tea, the beverage on its own can be quite bland or even bitter and not very tasty. As sugar, or sugar in the form of sucrose became more easily obtained and a greater source of calories to the common person’s diet, tea’s popularity was similarly influenced by sugar. Guests would break off a piece of sugar with the claws on the sugar tongs and add the sugar to their tea (Fig. 9).

Fig. 8:  Tea Caddy Spoon, Sterling, Birmingham 1839-40, Gervase Wheeler Shell Design.  
Fig. 9:  Sugar Tongs, Sterling Silver Nippers, Sheffield.

Note to Fig. 8:  To measure the expensive tea, thimblelike cover of the caddies were originally used.  Tea caddy spoons appeared toward the end of the eighteenth century.  They were made in innumerable shapes and designs primarily in Birmingham, although London and Sheffield were also sources.  This spoon is designed in a shell pattern, and is similar to one in the British Silver Collection at the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Laurel, MS.

Note to Fig. 9:  When pieces of sugar were broken off the cone-shaped loaf, they were dropped into the teacup by means of sugar tongs.  By the late eighteenth century, they were an acceptable article of tea equipage.  These tongs are of the "Scissor-Type" with oval shell type claws and appear to be highly decorative.

Today, tea caddies are seldom if ever employed for their original purpose—nor would it be advisable, considering that many of these antiques’ linings contain lead—but they have retained their allure. Another tea item that has retained their allure is the biscuit box/barrel. The first sterling biscuit boxes were made before 1800 and were part of that fine tea service.  By the time tea was commonplace in Victorian era, the biscuit barrel was introduced around 1860 and became an essential serving piece for any society hostess (Fig. 10 & 11). These containers provided a small sweet, perhaps a cookie to be served with tea, contrasting with either the bland or bitter flavored teas. The decorative glass, porcelain or wood barrel would keep the sweets fresh. The term barrel refers to a more rounded, cylindrical shape, in comparison to a geometric biscuit box that was created earlier in silver.  The biscuit barrels below were made nearly 100 years later after the Revolution, yet remain relevant today, as they now can serve as a decorative cookie jar.  

         

Fig. 10:  Three English Biscuit Barrels; 

1. Porcelain decorated with painted pink roses surrounded by a leaf floral pattern and a green trim banding. 2. An Oak wooden barrel with a front metal shield and an interior milk glass liner.  3. A cut crystal glass barrel with a engraved leaf patterned lid in the Victorian style.

Fig. 11:  Biscuit Box/Cookie Barrel is in the circular form having a gadrooned base with ribbon and bows banding.  The  hinged lid has a floral finial with silver banding just under the lid.  Hallmarked   "D & A" and ENPS.

Conclusion: 

In the early twentieth century the biscuit barrel, while still useful went out of vogue, at the same time, a New York tea merchant came up with the bright idea of manufacturing tiny bags of silk containing a single serving of tea. Thomas Sullivan revolutionized the world of tea with his invention of the teabag and met long-term success. Sullivan radically changed the process of preparing tea and made tea paraphernalia into today’s fine curiosities and collectables.

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Addition Notes and References:

Tea caddies are still being created to today.  Contemporary wood worker, Ulrike Scriba (b. 1944) Germany,  hand-crafted this wooden box from myrthe-root, ebony column corners and banding with an ivory button top and inlays on the front (Left Below).  High-end tea companies such as Petrossian Tea produced small tea caddies to sell their tea in department stores like Bloomingdales; this caddy was created before the fall of the Soviet Union Empire in 1991 and has a USSR tag on the bottom (Right Below). England still creates replicates of tea caddies in tin to sell tea, many find faux caddies desirable and decorative (Lower Images).      

           

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References:

• Rodris Roth, Tea Drinking in 18th Century America: Its Etiquette and Equipage, Good Press, Glasgow, Scotland, 2020.
• Samantha M. Ligon, The Fashionable Set: The Feasibility of Social Tea Drinking in 1774, Thesis Paper, Presented to the Department of American Studies, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1999.
• Gilles Brochard, The Book of Tea (Section: Time for Tea), Flammarion, Paris, 1992.  

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© 2021. Waller-Yoblonsky Fine Art is a research collaborative, working to track artists that got lost and overlooked due to time, changing styles, race, gender and/or sexual orientation. Our frequent blogs highlight artists and art movements that need renewed attention with improved information for the researcher and art collectors. The blog was created by Mr. Waller and all written materials were obtained by the Fair Use Section 107, of The Copyright Act. #waller-yoblonskyblogspot #walleryoblonskyblogspot #teacaddy #teacaddyspoon #sugartongs