Gasps, and then applause filled the room as the gavel fell at Woolley & Wallis Auctioneers in the cathedral town of Salisbury last week when an unpretentious teapot—missing its lid and with a broken handle— fetched over $800,000, courtesy of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Remarkably, the keen-eyed owner paid only $20 for the relic…
Norwood Pratt and Bruce Richardson Revive The Romance of Tea
2017 Edition of The Romance of TeaIt’s difficult to remember a time when authoritative books on tea were as rare as a good cup of Darjeeling. But that was the scenario in America throughout much of the 20th century — until publisher Alfred Knopf published William H. Ukers’ The Romance of Tea in 1936. Few books…
Birth of the American Tea Room
America’s great twentieth-century tea party was stoked by three remarkable social phenomena 1) the advent of the automobile, 2) the temperance movement, and 3)· women’s quest for equality. Put a thoroughly modern woman into the driver’s seat of a Ford, ban alcohol, build good roads that spiral out of major cities into the scenic countryside, and you…
Old MacDonald Had a Tearoom
Virgina MacDonald, Tearoom Pioneer The early third of the 20th century saw incredible growth in American tearooms. In a Saturday Evening Post article from 1938, writer Milton MacKaye perfectly described this modern social and culinary scenario from a male point of view -Many men—and I number myself among them— have what may be described as…