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The English and tea are deeply entwined in the popular imagination. ‘Afternoon tea’, the ‘tea party’, the 'tea shop'… how synonymous these are with English culture, and how evocative of another, gentler and more elegant age.
Tea is now taken for granted, everywhere abundant in teabags and stout mugs, a central feature of the daily lifestyle and culture of Britain. Yet we carry with us – as a kind of
English cultural memory – the sense that something has been lost along the way;
that once was a time when the occasion of taking tea was marked by finer and more quietly ceremonial rituals. Indeed, it is that sense of genteel tradition and graceful ceremony that is embodied in the very idea of the tea set.
Tea first found its way to Britain toward the later part of the C17th via the merchant venturers of early colonial Europe and the trade routes they established to bring goods out of the Far East, and particularly China. Such trade was formalised in the
establishment, under royal charter, of the English East India Company, and through them (and some illicit smuggling) both the fine teas of China and its delicate porcelain teapots and bowls began to flow back to Europe, becoming increasingly popular among
the wealthy and aristocratic. While a similar trade was bringing oriental wares into other parts of Europe – notably Holland and Italy – nowhere did the fascination and enthusiasm for tea take root more
comprehensively than in Britain.
Earliest tea sets
But it is to ancient China that we must look
for the origins of both the British taste for tea and the emergence of a set of equipment for its preparation, brewing and consumption.
For it was the ancient Chinese who first established a taste for the infusion of tea leaves and developed advanced earthenware vessels by means of which to brew and drink it. Some of the earliest earthenware tea pots date from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) – a period synonymous
with the production of fine pottery – and it’s striking that they are essentially identical in function and appearance to the tea pots of today.
As the collecting of oriental tea sets became more popular there was a move to take up their manufacture. Staffordshire was already established as a pottery region, and took up the reproduction of the fine porcelain brought back from the far east, which had by then begun to be
referred to collectively as ‘china’. Some notable names rose to prominence in this period, in particular Wedgewood and Spode, the latter inventing and perfecting a process that added bone ash, flint and feldspar to the English clays to produce the material henceforth known as ‘bone china’.
Early teacups emulated the delicate Chinese tea bowls, the handle on a teacup being a somewhat later innovation and addition.
All the tea from China…
It seems extraordinary to consider it today, but at one time all tea came exclusively from China, and was predominantly of the 'green' variety. It wasn’t until the 1830s that the British sought to establish new plantations in India, where tea was not a native crop. All the Indian teas that we have become so familiar with – Assam, Darjeeling, Ceylon – are
named from the regions where they were grown, and emerged from this period of colonial enterprise. When viewed in this context the mere name ‘Earl Grey’ seems to tell its own story.
Our insatiable demand for tea was a factor driving the ambitions of the British Empire on the Indian sub-continent, and it even influenced the direction of marine development too – the Tea Clipper ships were designed to run fast, transporting their cargo of precious tea leaves back to Britain to feed the nation's constantly growing demand for tea throughout
the 19th century.
We hope that you'll contact Vintage Tea Sets to learn more about our hire & event catering services, and how our fine bone china tea sets can enable you to recapture and celebrate something of that more elegant and refined era of taking tea with friends.
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