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!