They glowed in brilliant colours in the dim and dusty store, deep blue and red, yellow and pale turquoise, grass green, picked out with gold and silver bands and edgings. Some had exquisite paintings of shepherdesses and country scenes done by hand, or sprays of flowers, or blue and white Chinese scenes of willows and pagodas. The cups were all sorts of shapes and sizes, with handles or without them, with or without saucers. There was imported Chinese porcelain, there were clumsy 17^th century attempts at making tin-glazed earthenware look like Chinese porcelain and European attempts at making porcelain. There were silver lustre teapots and red stoneware teapots and earthenware teapots shaped like cabbages with moulded green leaves.

In twenty years or more at the museum, I had never had any idea that they were there. I only discovered them because I had recently been promoted to a job which meant I had responsibility for keeping the collection records for the whole museum up to date and accurate. I had hitherto spent most of my time working on the archaeology collection, so I thought I ought to spend some time on the social history collection as well. Since I specialised in medieval pottery, it seemed a natural progression to check the post-medieval pottery next.

These tea cups and pots were not found on excavations. A few had probably been donated to the museum by the daughters and grand-daughters and nieces of local people of historical interest. Most of them had been bought at auctions, car boot sales, or market stalls. They were chipped and cracked, and some had been very badly mended with a glue which had a tendency to yellow with age, so their financial value was virtually nil. I assumed they had been bought as a reference collection, to help identify small sherds found on site, or for occasional inclusion in a display of a period room. Or because the long-retired curator whom I suspected of having collected them just liked that kind of pottery.

But they were beautiful, even the damaged ones, with their jewel-bright colours and gilding. And the whole history of tea drinking in Britain was there. Tea was introduced into Europe from the Far East by the Dutch and Portuguese in the early 17^th century, reaching England by the mid-17^th century. It is said to have been popularised by Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese wife of Charles II. Tea grew to enormous importance in British diet, trade, and social rituals. Think about all the references to tea drinking in Jane Austen’s novels: Jane Bennet making tea in the drawing room after dinner, Catherine Morland and her chaperone taking tea in the interval at a ball. Think about William Cobbett’s fiery condemnation of tea-drinking among the labouring classes in his “Cottage Economy”: “I view the tea drinking as a destroyer of health, an enfeebler of the frame, an engenderer of effeminacy and laziness, a debaucher of youth, and a maker of misery for old age”. Oh dear!  In his opinion they should have stuck to nutritious home-brewed ale and he blamed the tax on malt. The production of the equipment needed for preparing and drinking tea, both metal and ceramic, was a major spin-off.  Think Royal Worcester, Crown Derby, Bow, Lowestoft, Liverpool, Chelsea and other major manufacturers.

You might say that that small collection of quite common tea and coffee wares, in poor condition, wasn’t really worth keeping. If it has been discarded since I retired I wouldn’t complain. But it gave me great pleasure at the time. And it allows me to show off a bit if I’m watching the Antiques Roadshow with friends!