Description

Sycamore Tea Caddy, floral painted with gold highlights under a glass top. With a cut steel handle, surround, escutcheon and finger pull.

This wonderful eye catching sycamore tea caddy is from Hungary and comes complete with fully working lock, tasselled key and has wonderful patination.

In England in the 1700s, tea was an expensive commodity. To keep it safe, people would store it in a lockable Tea Chest or Tea Box, which eventually became known as a Tea Caddy (the word caddy is derived from the Malay “kati”, a unit of weight by which tea was sold). As tea was too expensive to risk leaving in the presence of servants, the caddy would be kept in the drawing room. Subsequently, the Tea Caddy became an important & fashionable accessory for the home.

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