Category:Tea
From Mystic Tea Room
Tea Wars
In looking over old exterior views on vintage tea room postcards from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, it appears that between World War One and World War Two, the tea rooms of the British Commonwealth were experiencing something like the American "cola wars" of the 1970s and 1980s, only with respect to tea.
During this era, British tea shops and tea rooms displayed prominent exterior signage advertising the brand that they sold or served exclusively. This implies that regional and local distribution exclusives were being rammed down the throats of the tea room proprietors.
Judging by the number of signs photographed, the leading player in the "tea wars" of the 1920s and 1930s was Lyons.
Tea Blends Sold to Fortune Tellers
Every tea leaf reader known that the reading must start with a good choice of loose-leaf tea, but one secret that professional tea leaf readers have kept to themselves for decades is that they often make their own special blends of tea to facilitate cup reading. This is not done to enhance flavour or aroma so much as it is to bring out shapes. The selected blend provides leaves of varied sizes, textures, and colours, which means that more images will be formed in the cup.
I only know of two companies that manufactured and distributed special blends of tea designed for cup-reading. The earliest was the Ming-Cha Company of New York, with Tell Your Fortune Tea in the 1930s, and the most recent is aromaG's Botanica, with Fortune Telling Tea in the 2020s.
Fortune Telling Tea Cups from Tea Companies
Companies that trade in packaged tea have occasionally offered fortune telling tea cups as premiums with the purchase of their tea or have issued instructional booklets about tea leaf reading which were included in packages of tea. Lyons, the big player in the exterior signage "tea wars," did not indulge in metaphysics, but Lipton's, Red Rose, and others produced marked divination cups for readers.
Pages in category "Tea"
The following 3 pages are in this category, out of 3 total.