GENERAL INTEREST
Time For Tea by Nick Fletcher
Around 150 years ago , the practice of drinking tea was becoming established in Britain . Tea had been known before this period first introduced about 1720 but was confined to the wealthy as it was extremely expensive and was often kept under lock and key ! And for the first hundred years or so , tea was consumed without milk .
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We owe the development of tea drinking to Victorian Prime Minister William Gladstone who in the 1860s , substantially cut the tax on tea , thus making it much more affordable and more widely available . It was soon after that that several of the well-known tea companies were established , some of them such as Tetley still going strong today , others such as the bizarrely named Mazawattee long forgotten .
I mention the history of tea drinking because a whole collecting field has grown up around items relating to tea . This can take many forms such as old shop cards and posters advertising certain tea brands , colourful tinplate tea caddies very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries , and more modern promotional items such as the money box made for Rington ’ s Tea by Wade Pottery and in the shape of a delivery van . Examples are now fetching £ 50 or more . But the most popular tea collectable of all is the teapot , and some examples can fetch astonishing prices . At a London auction a few years ago , one very rare 18th century teapot made a breath-taking £ 42,000 , but happily most of the soughtafter teapots today are much more recent and much more affordable typically £ 50- £ 250 depending on maker , design and condition .
In the 1930s Art Deco stylists were turning out teapots in the form of racing cars and ocean liners and in the 1950s , there were teapots in the form of nursery rhyme characters and space-rockets .
From the 1970s to the 1990s , there was a big revival in the making of novelty teapots , not by nationally known manufacturers such as Royal Doulton , but by smaller regional potteries with a lower output and often more innovative designs . These include brands such as Swineside , Carters , Cosmic , and South West Ceramics , the latter producing an amazing teapot in the form of the Mad Hatter ’ s Tea Party ! Currently examples fetch £ 100 or so but can crop up at car boot sales for as little as £ 5 .
Other novelty teapot designs include slot machines , juke-boxes , cakes , animals , typewriters , fruit , ships , Santa Claus , clowns , and historical characters from King Henry VIII to Prince Charles and Lord Nelson to Winston Churchill - the list is almost endless .
Also look out for some of the political teapots that were popular in the 1970s and 1980s . One featured a rather pointed-nosed Margaret Thatcher and cost just £ 20 when new . Expect to pay about £ 200 today !