The Hexagonal Chinese Tea Caddy          - 20/8/2013      <--Prev : Next-->

Maybe it was a bad omen but the Wedgewood blue ceramic tea caddy broke on my birthday! That tea caddy had been in the family for donkey's years and I was rather sad.

Being a "keeper", I had fixed the lid several times but in a reckless moment I threw it out and found one of those lovely old tins that are circulating these days, I wonder if my children and grand children will be using my nouveau tea caddy half a century later?

I somehow doubt it, as for one thing the children are scattered far and wide and a tea caddy would be the last thing on their minds, but I am a sentimentalist.

Granny's tea caddy, in which I keep the rooibos tea, must be an antique too. Now the Tanganda Tea and the Rooibos tea have to be kept in distinctly different caddies because I am the only family member who likes Rooibos!!

So Grannies caddy contains the Rooibos. It is a most distinctive tea caddy. Very much Willow- Pattern-Plate but in golds and greens rather than the traditional blues and whites. It is scratched, dented, battered and bruised, or maybe etched rather, with decades of love and happy tea drinking.

I believe it contained cookies way, way back in the dark ages, I wonder how many hexagonal biscuit tins in black, green and gold, with Chinese scenes depicted, are still in existence today?

Tea is the panacea for all things in our family. Tea cures colds, it fixes stress, it calms tense situations, it makes happiness even happier and the fact that the tea bags reside in an ancient old family tea caddy, makes them even more special.

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