A Cup of Tea
Every day, most people have a cup of tea. There is more history in that than you suspect.
As a teenager and young woman, my wife Beverley was Private Secretary to the Australian Manager of a very fine old English firm in fashion fabrics. In the office next to hers was the Private Secretary to the Australian Manager of the fine old English firm, Royal Albert China. The two women were good friends. When Royal Albert was changing a display, she would offer Beverley fine bone china pieces that had been used in the display and therefore could not be sold as new. Consequently, we each had fine clothes of the best English fabrics and absolutely the finest of fine bone china in our crystal cabinet, and that has started a love affair with fine bone china that has continued to this day.
We still love to buy lovely pieces, and because we entertain a lot of guests we use it continually. Virtually nothing has been broken for fifty years. On our shelves I notice over one hundred cup, saucer and plate sets with English makers such as Spode, Wedgewood, Royal Albert, Royal Stewart, Royal Doulton, Royal Winton, Aynsley, Shelley, Marlborough, Carlton, Regency, and the modern maker Maxwell Williams, with Dutch china from Delft, and Japanese dining sets from Noritake and Mikasa, whose companies copied the English techniques of making fine bone china.
English Fine Bone China is a classic product, universally admired, and generally accepted as the premier material for tableware. It is in daily use throughout the world, but also, in its finest and most prestigious forms, reserved for the tables of state occasions. Yet the man who inspired all this was an extremely poor workman with little education. At the age of six, Josiah Spode saw his father buried in a pauper’s grave. At seven, he was put to work in a pottery factory, working a 12-hour day. By the time he was sixteen, in 1749, he was apprenticed to Thomas Whieldon, who was then the most successful potter in Staffordshire. After five years, he moved on to work as a skilled potter for William Banks, of Stoke, before opening his own small factory, making cream-coloured and blue painted earthenware. He obviously prospered, for he was able eventually to purchase the factory of his former employer, William Banks, in Stoke-on-Trent.
Josiah Spode’s outstanding skills and creativity were to produce the two most important developments in English ceramics. In 1784, he perfected blue underglaze printing on earthenware from hand-engraved copper plates. It not only ensured the future of his company, but also was essential for the phenomenal growth of the English tableware industry that followed. Then he produced the single most significant development in the history of his industry – the perfection of the formula for Fine Bone China. Its brilliant whiteness and delicate translucency inspired new standards of artistry, skill, and finish.
The use of bone ash had been known from the middle ages. Its use as a tableware ingredient emerged about 1750 and in the succeeding fifty years several experimental formulations were tried. Bone china is made of 50% bone ash, and 25% each of china clay and china stone. It is combined with water to make a slurry, which is then fashioned into cups, saucers, plates and so on. The pieces must be fired in a kiln at high degrees of heat (1100c to 1250c) for the china to become hard and strong. It is the bone (usually animal bone, cleaned of all meat and glue) that gives the china its transparent whiteness.
One historian comments, “The Spode factory at Stoke-on-Trent was without doubt the most important factory in the early 19th Century.” Spode realized his dream of producing the whitest, most translucent, and strongest Fine Bone China. The Willow pattern was developed by Josiah Spode from an original Chinese pattern called Mandarin in about 1790. Ever since its introduction, the pattern has been extremely popular. Although the legend attached to it is apocryphal. We all know the romantic story, but unfortunately, it is fictional. The main features of the true Willow pattern are the bridge with three persons crossing it, the willow tree, the boat, the main teahouse, the two birds and the fence in the foreground of the garden. There is apparently no Chinese pattern that contains all the features of the standard Willow pattern. At our home we have many Willow pieces, but also other 19th century Chinese designs which Spoke produce.
In June 2000, whilst making repairs to a building at the Spode factory, huge quantities of this pattern were found which had been used as foundations for a wall over a hundred years earlier. These pieces were dated to the very early 1800s and included shards from all sorts of tableware shapes, making them very interesting for historians. Meanwhile, Josiah Wedgwood, the founder of the company that still bears his name, built his pottery factory in 1769. He became known as ‘The Father of English potters’. Wedgwood first produced bone china in 1812, and it continues to be the company’s bestseller. Fine bone china has been in continuous production at Wedgewood for nearly 200 years. In the same pottery district of England, there are a dozen other manufacturers of fine bone China, including many in the list above.
When I came to Wesley Mission in 1979, I discovered that every Sunday, hundreds of people attended what was called High Tea. This had been a continuous activity for more than one hundred years. Volunteers with tea and coffee serve delicious cakes, sandwiches, savouries and slices, without cost to mainly homeless and very poor citizens. The leaders of our work, including myself, were the waiters and waitresses (today known as “wait persons”) who served the people with a dignity most of them never saw at any other time of their week.
Afternoon tea (because it was usually taken in the late afternoon) is also called “low tea” because it was usually taken in a sitting or lounge room where low tables (like a coffee table) were placed near sofas or lounge chairs. In England, the traditional time for tea was four or five o’clock and no one stayed after seven o’clock. Most tearooms today serve tea from three to five o’clock. The menu includes three particular courses served specifically in this order: Savories, (tiny sandwiches or appetizers), scones (served with jam and Devonshire or clotted cream), and pastries (cakes, cookies, shortbread and sweets).
King Charles II (1630-1685) brought to England direct trading rights to tea. Tea became popular amongst the wealthier classes of society, as whatever the royals did, everyone wanted to copy. Soon tea mania spread swept across England, and it became the beverage of choice in English high society replacing ale as the national drink.
By 1700, tea was on sale in more than 500 teahouses in London. Tea drinking became even more popular when Queen Anne (1665–1714) chose tea over ale as her regular breakfast drink. During the second half of the Victorian era, working families would return home tired and exhausted to a table set with meat, bread, butter, pickles, cheese and tea (similar to a “ploughman’s lunch”). In 1819, the Duchess of Bedford, is credited as the creator of afternoon tea. The menu centered on small cakes, bread and butter sandwiches, assorted sweets, and tea. This summer practice proved so popular, the Duchess continued it by sending cards to her friends asking them to join her for “tea and a walk in the fields.” The practice of inviting friends to come for tea in the afternoon was quickly picked up by other social hostesses.
For twenty-five years I have been proud to have a friend, Merrill J. Fernando, the founder of Dilmah Tea. You will know this distinguished man from his television ads. I have visited the family plantations and magnificent factories in Sri Lanka. His tea brand name was a compilation of the names of his two sons, Dylan and Marlik, who today manage the company. Every month for years past, Merrill would send me 10,000 Dilmah tea bags for our aged care centres, hospitals and restaurant facilities of Wesley Mission. This was a wonderful donation to our work. Whenever he came to Sydney he would call me and we would have a cup of tea together in our gold licensed restaurant.
I have had a cup of tea on many occasions with Governors, Governor Generals, Prime Ministers and Premiers, television & film stars, and celebrities. But I was always more nervous that everything went well, as I poured a cup of tea with the most famous tea expert in the world more than anyone else! I always took the time to ask him some questions about the manufacture or the lore of tea. As a young man staying at the home of Dame Enid Lyons, I had a crash course in table manners from this most famous mother in Australia and wife of the Former Prime Minister, and Cabinet Minister. In turn I have taught my children and staff the same lessons.
Teacups are held by placing one’s fingers to the front and back of the handle with one’s pinkie up for balance. Pinkie up does not mean straight up in the air, but slightly tilted. It is not an affectation, but a graceful way to avoid spills.
We should not stir tea vigorously nor leave the teaspoon in the cup. When not in use, place your teaspoon on the right side of the tea saucer. Never wave or hold your teacup in the air. When not in use, place the teacup back in the tea saucer. If you are at a buffet tea hold the tea saucer in your lap with your left hand and hold the teacup in your right hand. When not in use, place the teacup back in the tea saucer and hold in your lap. The only time a saucer is raised together with the teacup is when one is at a standing reception. You never pour tea into the saucer to cool it or drink it!
Milk may be served with tea but never cream. Cream is too heavy and masks the taste of the tea. Although some pour their milk in the cup first, it is probably better to pour the milk in the tea after it is in the cup, in order to get the correct amount. (You are then a ‘post-lactarian’, for those who argue about pre or post millennialism!) When serving lemon with black tea, lemon slices are preferable but make sure you include also the skin that has delicious oils that flavour the tea. The tea server can neatly place a slice in the teacup after the tea has been poured. Be sure never to add lemon with milk since the lemon’s citric acid will cause the milk to curdle.
When our family comes to tea, there are 22 of us, and we have had years of entertaining large numbers of friends and church folk as well. We have enough chairs and fine English bone china, cup, saucer and plate sets, to entertain sixty or more at one sitting. It is always a pleasure to say, “Would your like to come to morning tea?” Or “Would you like to come for afternoon tea?” Some baking, some scones, jam and cream or iced cakes, some chocolate chip cookies or slices on the fine china three tiered cake stands, and we are in for a good time.
Would you like a cup of tea?
Rev The Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes, A.C., M.L.C.
