Ubiquitous
The Tea Caddy
Meagan Oglesby 3139502
My Parents own a rather old, battered and bright green tea caddy*(the green was a later addition by my mother, colour coordinating her kitchen). My father claims it as one of his only inherited items from his parents. Looking at the tea caddy it seems a rather bizarre thing to have inherited as it doesn’t really hold many heirloom qualities and I think opposed to it being given as a gift, it probably is better described as coming to him by default. His parents had left it with him when they returned to live in England. Its significances is mostly sentimental. It was originally my grandma’s as she had been provided with it during the blitz;,, a container to hold her gasmask. After the war she had little use for the gas mask but a sealable tin container was quite a useful item and it became the family tea caddy. Tea drinking has always been part of daily routine or ritual, often involving sitting round the kitchen bench and conversing over a cup. The tea caddy is always a common sight in our kitchen.
*a tea caddy is generally an airtight container for storing tealeaves or teabags in.
Up in the kitchen cupboard amongst an array of highly branded instant coffees and a too broad range of exotic, herbal/fruity and some extraordinarily old and disgusting teas, sits an obviously old, bright green, cylindrical container, and as its present situation suggests, it contains tea. Loose leaves, a blend of Madura black, Orange Pekoe and something else no one can quite remember, to be exact.
The canister sits up there until someone (usually dad) says “lets make a pot” or something akin to that. The teapot is cleaned of the last remnants of soggy cold tea leaves, usually deposited in the garden, and the green tea caddy is removed from its shelf and someone will spoon an amount of its innards into the pot, boiling water is poured over the fresh tea leaves and left to steep until poured into the awaiting mugs.
The word “tea caddy” is derived from the Chinese-Malay word “katti” or “catti” which is a measure of weight, about 600grams. Tea originally was grown in China. The Chinese had for generations grown and traded tea to Europe, first the Portuguese then the Spaniards, the English and the French. It was however the English who impacted the most upon the Chinese. Although the English had taken some time to catch onto the idea of drinking tea, once they had, everyone was drinking it. Tea became the national beverage. It was called “a civilising addiction” as for many it replaced the drinking of gin. But by removing a curse on one society it was transferred to another. In the early nineteenth century the British East India Company monopolised the tea market but even so in relative terms to the amount of tea they were bringing into England the profits to the company were small. The Chinese had little interest or use of the English produce and therefore expected silver or gold. Eventually the East India Company came up with a solution: Opium. By the late 1830s it is thought that somewhere between two million and four million Chinese were addicts. The profits from trading opium soon became higher then tea. The Chinese said that the degradation that opium caused upon their society was also destroying the economy of the country as well. The Chinese Authorities put into place a very effective campaign which froze the drug trafficking. Not a chest of opium was being sold. The British traders faced bankruptcy. Not only could they not sell their opium, they couldn’t buy tea. 1839 a small British naval fleet attacked a fleet of Chinese war junks and sunk them. The opium war lasted until 1842. During that period of time the British were unable to purchase tea and had to resort to industrial espionage, stealing tea plants. The British cultivated huge tea plantations in India and what was then called Ceylon (Sri Lanka). (Hayes. C. 1950), (Salisbure. H.1983)
However, the tea caddy itself evolved from a glass, china or silver jar into a beautifully decorated wooden (usually mahogany or walnut) box with a lock and key. Tea drinking, because of teas exorbitant price when it was first brought into Europe, was a habit of only the wealthier class .Trade with the Chinese improved and then with the eventually break down of the Chinese monopoly, as a result of the British planting their own plantations, the price of tea fell, allowing the majority of the British population to drink it. The need for the tea caddy with a lock and key ceased and eventually an airtight container which kept the leaves fresh was the most practical answer for storing tea leaves.
Our tea caddy hasn’t always lived in our kitchen cupboard but was originally my grandparents tea caddy, My dad claims it proudly as one of the few items he inherited from his parents, which is somewhat amusing as it doesn’t look the type of thing that one inherits, and inheriting is not the word that describes the situation all that well as inheriting an item conjures up the image of heirloom qualities.
Our tea caddy really came to my father by default. In 1958 my Grandfather was given the opportunity, by the company he worked in, for him and his family to migrate to Australia. My Dad, as a four year old, remembers the excitement of a huge crate arriving at their home in Birmingham, England and packing it full of bits of furniture and household items, including a tea caddy. They traveled by Ship to Australia and settled in Melbourne. After a fourteen year period of living here my Grandfather decided that he preferred England, and he and my Grandmother moved (by airplane) back to their homeland, leaving their furniture, many of their household items and their children, behind. They left behind the tea caddy and it ended up with my Dad.
When my dad was little he remembers refilling the tea caddy with tea leaves. As he poured them in a fine dust of tea would come up into his face, making him wonder whether he could capture the fine dust and use it to makes instant tea.
The cylinder is constructed from tin. Embossed in the bottom are the words ‘Container made in England’ and the numbers 381. The outside of the canister has been covered with a bright green sheet of contact which my Mum attached when she and Dad brought their first home The kitchen had at the time a rather trendy bright apple green bench top and Mum decorated the tea caddy to match. I’m pretty sure the lid is made of bakelite. It feels and looks like it and I read somewhere that if you rub it till it’s warm it will smell like formaldehyde, I had two problems with that; firstly over fifty years of holding tea leaves has left it ingrained with the smell of tea and secondly I don’t know the apparently unmistakable smell of formaldehyde. Attaching the lid to the main body is a piece of steel wire which runs around the circumference of the cylinder attached to more wire that is formed into a catch at the front not dissimilar to those on rubber rimmed glass jars. At the back the wire threads through a hole in the lid hinging it to the canister. Although there is not a lot left of it, there was once a rubber rim in the lid which would have caused an airtight seal, but now has decayed and all that remains is a red stain and the odd little piece that has bonded itself to the bakelite.
But the canister hasn’t always been a tea caddy. Its original purpose was to hold a gas mask. My Grandmother lived in Sheffield England during the Second World War. Sheffield was an industrial city. It manufactured huge amounts of steel therefore making it a major German target during the blitz.
Having seen the effects of chlorine gas on soldiers in the First World War, the British government were concerned that a form of poison gas would be used on civilians. Gas masks were issued to every civilian in Britain. By 1940 thirty eight million gas masks were produced. Everyone had to carry their gasmask with them wherever they went. Though not long after issue many people had given up carrying their gas mask with them. It was fortunate poison gas was never used on civilians in Britain.
A government leaflet was produced just after the outbreak of the war:
“If poison Gas has been used you will be warned by means of hand rattles. Keep off the streets until the poison gas has been cleared away. Hand bells will ring when there is no longer any danger. If you hear the rattles when you are out put on your gas mask at once and get indoors as soon as you can.”
My Grandmother was issued with a gas mask, but after the war had little use for it, but a sealable tin canister was particularly useful for storing food and in our case it became used to store tea leaves.
We don’t feel the tea caddy has any great monetary value, its collectable-ness diminishes without a gasmask inside and it’s dinted and really not that brilliant for storing tea leaves in as the decay of the rubber seal has rendered it no longer airtight. It’s value is purely sentimental. When my Father sees it he is reminded of his mother and her talking about the war, about being a schoolgirl during the blitz, about the clothes she wore, the dances she went to, the music she listened to, her friends and family and her going off to school with her schoolbag and her gas mask. It’s a tangible link with the past.
Reference
Hayes, JH Carlton 1950, Political and Cultural History of Modern Europe Vol 2, Macmillan New York.
Salisbure, Harrison E. 1983 China 100 Years of Revolution, Andre Deutch Limited, USA.
The Tea Caddy
Meagan Oglesby 3139502
My Parents own a rather old, battered and bright green tea caddy*(the green was a later addition by my mother, colour coordinating her kitchen). My father claims it as one of his only inherited items from his parents. Looking at the tea caddy it seems a rather bizarre thing to have inherited as it doesn’t really hold many heirloom qualities and I think opposed to it being given as a gift, it probably is better described as coming to him by default. His parents had left it with him when they returned to live in England. Its significances is mostly sentimental. It was originally my grandma’s as she had been provided with it during the blitz;,, a container to hold her gasmask. After the war she had little use for the gas mask but a sealable tin container was quite a useful item and it became the family tea caddy. Tea drinking has always been part of daily routine or ritual, often involving sitting round the kitchen bench and conversing over a cup. The tea caddy is always a common sight in our kitchen.
*a tea caddy is generally an airtight container for storing tealeaves or teabags in.
Up in the kitchen cupboard amongst an array of highly branded instant coffees and a too broad range of exotic, herbal/fruity and some extraordinarily old and disgusting teas, sits an obviously old, bright green, cylindrical container, and as its present situation suggests, it contains tea. Loose leaves, a blend of Madura black, Orange Pekoe and something else no one can quite remember, to be exact.
The canister sits up there until someone (usually dad) says “lets make a pot” or something akin to that. The teapot is cleaned of the last remnants of soggy cold tea leaves, usually deposited in the garden, and the green tea caddy is removed from its shelf and someone will spoon an amount of its innards into the pot, boiling water is poured over the fresh tea leaves and left to steep until poured into the awaiting mugs.
The word “tea caddy” is derived from the Chinese-Malay word “katti” or “catti” which is a measure of weight, about 600grams. Tea originally was grown in China. The Chinese had for generations grown and traded tea to Europe, first the Portuguese then the Spaniards, the English and the French. It was however the English who impacted the most upon the Chinese. Although the English had taken some time to catch onto the idea of drinking tea, once they had, everyone was drinking it. Tea became the national beverage. It was called “a civilising addiction” as for many it replaced the drinking of gin. But by removing a curse on one society it was transferred to another. In the early nineteenth century the British East India Company monopolised the tea market but even so in relative terms to the amount of tea they were bringing into England the profits to the company were small. The Chinese had little interest or use of the English produce and therefore expected silver or gold. Eventually the East India Company came up with a solution: Opium. By the late 1830s it is thought that somewhere between two million and four million Chinese were addicts. The profits from trading opium soon became higher then tea. The Chinese said that the degradation that opium caused upon their society was also destroying the economy of the country as well. The Chinese Authorities put into place a very effective campaign which froze the drug trafficking. Not a chest of opium was being sold. The British traders faced bankruptcy. Not only could they not sell their opium, they couldn’t buy tea. 1839 a small British naval fleet attacked a fleet of Chinese war junks and sunk them. The opium war lasted until 1842. During that period of time the British were unable to purchase tea and had to resort to industrial espionage, stealing tea plants. The British cultivated huge tea plantations in India and what was then called Ceylon (Sri Lanka). (Hayes. C. 1950), (Salisbure. H.1983)
However, the tea caddy itself evolved from a glass, china or silver jar into a beautifully decorated wooden (usually mahogany or walnut) box with a lock and key. Tea drinking, because of teas exorbitant price when it was first brought into Europe, was a habit of only the wealthier class .Trade with the Chinese improved and then with the eventually break down of the Chinese monopoly, as a result of the British planting their own plantations, the price of tea fell, allowing the majority of the British population to drink it. The need for the tea caddy with a lock and key ceased and eventually an airtight container which kept the leaves fresh was the most practical answer for storing tea leaves.
Our tea caddy hasn’t always lived in our kitchen cupboard but was originally my grandparents tea caddy, My dad claims it proudly as one of the few items he inherited from his parents, which is somewhat amusing as it doesn’t look the type of thing that one inherits, and inheriting is not the word that describes the situation all that well as inheriting an item conjures up the image of heirloom qualities.
Our tea caddy really came to my father by default. In 1958 my Grandfather was given the opportunity, by the company he worked in, for him and his family to migrate to Australia. My Dad, as a four year old, remembers the excitement of a huge crate arriving at their home in Birmingham, England and packing it full of bits of furniture and household items, including a tea caddy. They traveled by Ship to Australia and settled in Melbourne. After a fourteen year period of living here my Grandfather decided that he preferred England, and he and my Grandmother moved (by airplane) back to their homeland, leaving their furniture, many of their household items and their children, behind. They left behind the tea caddy and it ended up with my Dad.
When my dad was little he remembers refilling the tea caddy with tea leaves. As he poured them in a fine dust of tea would come up into his face, making him wonder whether he could capture the fine dust and use it to makes instant tea.
The cylinder is constructed from tin. Embossed in the bottom are the words ‘Container made in England’ and the numbers 381. The outside of the canister has been covered with a bright green sheet of contact which my Mum attached when she and Dad brought their first home The kitchen had at the time a rather trendy bright apple green bench top and Mum decorated the tea caddy to match. I’m pretty sure the lid is made of bakelite. It feels and looks like it and I read somewhere that if you rub it till it’s warm it will smell like formaldehyde, I had two problems with that; firstly over fifty years of holding tea leaves has left it ingrained with the smell of tea and secondly I don’t know the apparently unmistakable smell of formaldehyde. Attaching the lid to the main body is a piece of steel wire which runs around the circumference of the cylinder attached to more wire that is formed into a catch at the front not dissimilar to those on rubber rimmed glass jars. At the back the wire threads through a hole in the lid hinging it to the canister. Although there is not a lot left of it, there was once a rubber rim in the lid which would have caused an airtight seal, but now has decayed and all that remains is a red stain and the odd little piece that has bonded itself to the bakelite.
But the canister hasn’t always been a tea caddy. Its original purpose was to hold a gas mask. My Grandmother lived in Sheffield England during the Second World War. Sheffield was an industrial city. It manufactured huge amounts of steel therefore making it a major German target during the blitz.
Having seen the effects of chlorine gas on soldiers in the First World War, the British government were concerned that a form of poison gas would be used on civilians. Gas masks were issued to every civilian in Britain. By 1940 thirty eight million gas masks were produced. Everyone had to carry their gasmask with them wherever they went. Though not long after issue many people had given up carrying their gas mask with them. It was fortunate poison gas was never used on civilians in Britain.
A government leaflet was produced just after the outbreak of the war:
“If poison Gas has been used you will be warned by means of hand rattles. Keep off the streets until the poison gas has been cleared away. Hand bells will ring when there is no longer any danger. If you hear the rattles when you are out put on your gas mask at once and get indoors as soon as you can.”
My Grandmother was issued with a gas mask, but after the war had little use for it, but a sealable tin canister was particularly useful for storing food and in our case it became used to store tea leaves.
We don’t feel the tea caddy has any great monetary value, its collectable-ness diminishes without a gasmask inside and it’s dinted and really not that brilliant for storing tea leaves in as the decay of the rubber seal has rendered it no longer airtight. It’s value is purely sentimental. When my Father sees it he is reminded of his mother and her talking about the war, about being a schoolgirl during the blitz, about the clothes she wore, the dances she went to, the music she listened to, her friends and family and her going off to school with her schoolbag and her gas mask. It’s a tangible link with the past.
Reference
Hayes, JH Carlton 1950, Political and Cultural History of Modern Europe Vol 2, Macmillan New York.
Salisbure, Harrison E. 1983 China 100 Years of Revolution, Andre Deutch Limited, USA.
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