Tea caddy

A Tea caddy is a receptacle used to store tea. The word ‘caddy’ is thought to derive from ‘catty’ which was the term for the Chinese weight measurement roughly equivalent to a pound.

The earliest examples came from China and were made from blue and white Chinese porcelain in the shape of the ginger-jar with lids or stoppers.

Later versions came in a greater variety of designs and materials and tea caddies were made of wood, pewter, brass, copper and sometimes silver. The most popular material became wood, and a very large number of Georgian caddies that are box-shaped still exist. Made from a range of woods including mahogany, satinwood, and rosewood, they were often very ornate, mounted in brass with lid knobs of silver, ebony or ivory.

Examples were made in Holland from Delft earthenware and many English factories produced good quality products. As the use of boxes rather than jars became more popular, boxes appeared with internal partitions that could store black and green tea and sugar separately within one box. These had locks as tea and sugar were expensive commodities that needed to be kept safe from light-fingered servants.

As tea got cheaper, concern with how it was stored waned and ornamental caddies fell out of use.