Painted tea caddies and the tunbridge connection.

The Commutation Act of 1784 was probably the single most important stimulus in the development of the tea caddy in eighteenth-century Britain. Up to this time, tea had been so expensive that it could be enjoyed only in small quantities and exclusively by the elite, who usually kept their tea leaves in beautifully decorated canisters of silver, enamel, or ceramic that were set into finely made caskets of wood, tortoiseshell, shagreen, or other decorative material. The act reduced the tax on tea dramatically and so made it more widely available. Not surprisingly, the storage vessels for tea leaves, produced as part of the tea equipage, became more varied than ever before.