TEA CADDIES

Town & Country Antiques has tea caddies and tea chests in various materials. Most are English and date from the 18th and 19th centuries. Some are small single caddies made to hold one variety of loose tea leaves. Some are larger – with 2 tea compartments with interior lids, or with separate lift-out compartments for 2 types of tea, with the compartments flanking a glass bowl for lumps of sugar.

Materials include wood (with or without decorative inlays), papier-mache, silver (often in shagreen cases), rolled paper, mother-of-pearl, tole ware, tortoiseshell and ivory. Since tea was expensive at the time these tea caddies were made, they were typically fitted with a lock.

The large metal tea canisters were primarily found in retail locations, such as grocers or tea merchants, to hold many different varieties of loose tea leaves. They typically features painted decoration – either simple banding and numbers or elaborate Chinoiserie designs and characters. Many tea canisters in retail locations were in numbered sets of 8 or more. Today even one tea canister can be a distinctive decorative element or can be made useful by conversion to a lamp with the proper electrical fittings and a lampshade.

Some from our selection of tea caddies were made in novelty shapes – such as apples, pears or melons. Appropriately, the wood often used for these was usually ‘fruitwood’. Some caddies were decorated in colorful rolled paper – in decorative patterns like quillwork - usually on a hexagonal or elliptical shaped body. Some in our selection are highly decorative tea caddies that are veneered in either tortoiseshell or ivory, or sometimes a combination of the two.

Browse our selection of tea caddies and canisters, online or at the shop:

*Tortoiseshell & Ivory * Silver * Wood * Tole * Papier-mache * Rolled Paper*
* Fruit-shaped* Tunbridge Ware * Tea Canisters*