More than just a drink
Looking over 300 years of tea's history in Britain, it has never been simply a drink--a fact which the 19th-century critic and humanist John Ruskin quite failed to grasp. Ruskin opened a tea shop in London specially to sell tea of guaranteed quality to the poor at reasonable prices. But his customers were few, and in the end he shut up shop, complaining that "the poor only like to buy their tea where it is brilliantly lit and eloquently ticketed."
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From Shennong and Lu Yu to the Mad Hatter's tea party in Alice in Wonderland, this giant-size teapot in London's Bramah Tea and Coffee Museum tells the story of China tea's journey across the oceans to faraway Britain.
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After tea found its way to the West, paintings of its land of origin became popular there too.
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This French cartoon informs about the British fashion for drinking tea. The low rail around the edge of the table is to prevent the precious tea service falling off.
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After tea reached England it became a favorite of the upper classes, and not only found its way into poetry and painting, but played an important role in portraiture. The young lady in the picture is holding a Chinese-style teabowl.
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An antique lacquerware tea-chest with lock from the collection of Twinings' tea shop in London.
A tea table in a corner of the Blue Room at the English stately home Woburn Abbey reminds visitors of the rare tea, valuable porcelain and elegant manners of the 18th century.
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The coffee-houses of 17th and 18th-century London were places where people from political and business circles gathered to converse and debate, and to sample a novel drink: tea.
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A wooden box at the coffee-house doorway was marked T.I.P.--"to insure promptness." When the waiters heard the jangle of a sufficiently large amount of coin falling into the box, they hurried out to give preferential service. This is said to be the origin of the expression "tipping."
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Twinings' old shop in London stands beside a bank and opposite a courthouse, on the site of the original Tom's Coffee-house.
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As the coffee-houses went into decline, tea gardens took over as fashionable places where well-heeled Londoners could imbibe and socialize.
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Drinking tea in a real tea garden is a pleasure which can only be enjoyed in a tea-growing country. Shown here is a tea garden in Mucha on the outskirts of Taipei which is open to sightseers.
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From the 19th century onwards, discussing politics over a drink of tea was no longer the exclusive reserve of professional people. This satirical cartoon shows the laboring classes taking tea and debating politics in a farmhouse.
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At first in England tea was mainly sold loose. Merchants did not generally sell tea in prepackaged quantities until the 1880s. From selling imported Chinese tea to creating its own brands, the story of Twinings is a microcosm of the history of tea drinking in Britain.
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Full circle: English afternoon tea comes to Taiwan, at Taipei's 1995 British Festival.