Revolutionary Tea

[brandon]

Found in a museum in Williamsburg, VA.





I also bought a 1/4lb of Young Hyson, a green tea known to have gone overboard during the Boston Tea Party. It is pretty nasty.

[Victoria]

Heh, that's like my mother when I asked her why when she got mad at Dad would she break a plate. She said, "Oh, I never throw the good stuff."

Nic pics

[brandon]

Silver and pewter tea items from the same museum. This is a small portion of the tea related items, there were several cases of painted Chinese porcelain and domestic porcelain designs. Bottom line is 18th century Americans were well aware of Teaware Acquisition Disorder.

[scruffmcgruff]

...in the mid-eighteenth century, tea drinking and teapots sometimes became a forum for charged political debate.

This sounds awfully familiar...

Very cool Brandon, thanks for posting!

[ABx]

Wow, those silver and pewter items are really beautiful. Very nice! I have a hard time believing that they're original, though, considering there's no tarnish (and polishing reduces their value). Nevertheless beautiful, though. In a way it's actually kinda nice to see it the way that they would have seen it back then.

Sounds like a neat museum visit. I should see if we have anything like that here. I haven't been to our local museum in some time, and it was before I was really into tea, so I don't recall if they have anything tea related or not.

But yeah, if you consider the way things were back then, I think tea was probably acquired with just as much, if not more, zeal than we do. Especially considering some of that stuff shown was probably considered status symbols. They also didn't have all of the sodas, juices, milks, Starbucks, mineral waters, spring waters, and so on and so forth (ad nauseum) that we have today.

And yes, young hyson isn't so good. I bet that it was just as stale as the stuff they used to get, though - Authentic!