Royal Wedding week for HRH Prince Harry and his fiancée Ms. Meghan Markle and it wouldn’t be complete without a small discussion and a little history about “taking tea.” Warming us when it’s chilly outside and cooling us down when poured over ice cubes in the summer ~ tea is the perfect drink no matter what side of the Pond one lives on! 😉

Excitement and guessing about what the bride’s dress will look like are all part of what is being shared this week surrounding the upcoming Saturday nuptials at St. George’s Cathedral, Windsor Castle, England of
HRH Prince Harry of England and Ms. Meghan Markle ~ a fairy tale being played out much like one 62 years ago where another American actress Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier of Monaco in April of 1956.
Tea and Brits
Tea and the British go together like… well…
tea and biscuits…
This week I shared a post about porcelain fit for a king so today I thought I’d share a little about how tea time as we know it came to be.
Tea as a drink has its origins in China in the year 2737 BC when Emperor Shennong was away from home with his army. His servant was preparing hot water for him to drink and a leaf from the camellia sinensis bush blew into his cup. The leaf went undetected and Emperor Shennong drank from the cup and found the brewed tea to his liking.
In the 1500’s, Portuguese priests and merchants were offered tea to drink in China and they enjoyed it and brought tea leaves back to their part of the Western world. Tea became a popular drink in the United Kingdom
during the next century.
The East India Tea Company brought tea production to India during this time in order to compete with China. Consumption of tea was mostly for the upper classes initially as tea was expensive but with England being able to produce its own tea, the drink was eventually cost-effective and made available to everyone.
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Anna, Duchess of Bedford By Unknown – http://entertainment.webshots.com/photo/2716693070094285158FiYlXt, Public Domain, Link |
Anna, the seventh Duchess of Bedford, started the tradition of afternoon tea back in 1840 by inviting in a few friends to share a light meal to stave off hunger between the noon meal and dinner
which then was served at 8:00p.m.
A cream tea is a tea that serves scones with clotted cream and a small pot of jam.
In the Victorian Tea Society when we had teas at each other’s
homes we really had an afternoon tea.
Once in a while if a friend just happened to stop by
then I might have a cream tea as a mid-morning snack
but actually a cream tea is a type of afternoon tea
in the United Kingdom.
Tea Accoutrements
Tea tins
“On the eve of WWII the British Government printed 2.5 million Keep Calm and Carry On posters. The aim of the simple five word statement was to convey tot he country a message of reassurance for the troubled times that lay ahead.
“The posters went unused and subsequently destroyed at the end of the war. Some 55 years later a second hand book dealer in the North of England discovered a copy of the poster in a box of books bought for auction. That find marked the rebirth and launch of the Keep Calm and Carry On message into the 20th Century.”
Tea tins have been in production for over a century now but tea was first stored in small locked tea chests or boxes within the home {think the Boston Tea Party of Dec. 16, 1773}.

Tea bags
There are first cutting and second cuttings of tea with the first cut referred to as the best tea for that harvest from the camellia sinensis bushes at a tea plantation. Brewing a cup or pot of loose leaf tea is still the best tasting way to enjoy tea.
There are differing types of tea ~ white, black, oolong, rooibos, green tea and more.
Tea spoons
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little history of tea today and
please check some of my other posts featuring tea
by just searching “tea,” “teatime” and “table settings” in
the search bar along the top, I believe it is.
🙂
Set your recorder to record the royal wedding which will begin at 4am EST this coming Saturday morning on all the major news channels starting at various times.
Check there programming for the correct time for that station ~ especially if you aren’t planning to get up to watch it live
Lovely Limoges

Antique china tends to have small chips often along its edges called flea bites and small crazing all over if not down and out cracks and repaired breaks which someone lovingly repaired long ago.
Other than drops, much of this is probably due to the stresses of weather and time as well as from being boxed away and stored when not in use or in fashion.
🙂
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Here I’ve repurposed this antique Irish soup tureen to display a candle ~ lovely! |
Tip
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This O and EG Royal Austria plate was manufactured somewhere between 1898 – 1918. I hadn’t realized it was that old! |
Too beautiful to just throw away past owners kept these
ethereal pieces until it was decided to let someone else
enjoy their beauty…
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This little antique creamer with its zeppelin shape charmingly holds some posies. |
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A collection of O and E G plates mixed with Haviland Limoges and other European tableware. |
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Little bits of love in a stamp… |
Often we call all of these pretty porcelain pieces Limoges

This was particularly popular at the beginning of the 20th century with American women.
Manufacturer’s used a newly invented process of transferring a
lithograph onto a piece when decorating a plate or china piece in
house ~ a process of placing a pre-inked tissue stamped by copper
plates which was then “transferred” by hand by a worker
onto each china blank.
The pieces were then fired at a low temperature to fuse the
beautiful prints into the clay.
an amazing amount of tableware pieces.
studying this sort of thing!
Sets of china
Laura Ingalls Gunn’s wedding week posts on her blog
Decor to Adore.
She shares many posts on tiaras and all things royal.
🙂
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A favorite photograph from this year’s Valentine’s post. |