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Tea Women Network
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| Jul 02, 2008 9:23 pm |
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Tea bag history... |
Ellen Schultz
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From The Times June 13, 2008
Serendipitea
The teabag has brought the luxury of the tea-table to the hurly-burly of modern living
It is tiny, created of paper and dust. It comes in diverse shapes from lamina to torus to pyramid. It works its magic in hot water. Yet it has become our most influential commodity of social intercourse: the teabag is 100 years old.
This is just the latest chapter in the romance of how the infusion of a dried oriental leaf came to rule the tables of the world. Like many inventions, it was the creature of serendipity, by which the inventor makes a discovery, by accident and sagacity, of things he was not in quest of. He was a New York coffee shop merchant, and his teabags have brought the passion of Dr Johnson and Queen Anne to the mug of EveryBuilder. Thomas Sullivan's original teabags were not cheap, but luxuries to save time and wandering leaves. They were hand-sewn from silk muslin, and shipped around the world. Tea in hessian rather than silk bags was the proximate cause of American independence. But teabags still stir up the passions that go with the mildest of drinks.
Milk first or last? Green or black; china or earthenware? Does one go for Gunpowder or Earl Grey? Is it not perverse British builders' barbarism to dilute the delicate infusion of an Eastern leaf with milk and sugar? Well, no. Indians, native tea-drinkers and to the Assam born, also do this. The English tea ceremony is as ritualistic as the Japanese, with tea strainer and sugar tongs, warming of the teapot, and the symbols of hierarchy, such as who get shortbread with their elevenses cuppa. Had we but world enough and time, such tea ceremonial were no crime. But in the hurly-burly of office life and the building site, the little bag makes the great comforter instantly available. So dunk your teabag with pride today.
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