Tea Spirit

One man has made a quest of restoring our reverence for tea and tea drinking – and in doing so has accumulated the world’s largest and finest private collection of teaware. ALICE HANCOCK pores over some exquisite and truly jaw-dropping designs

- Alice Hancock

Few nations on Earth are associated with tea in quite the way that Britain is. British writers have defined rules for drinking it (from Samuel Pepys’ early mention of ‘tee, a China drink’ to George Orwell, whose essay A Nice Cup of Tea details 11 stern rules for tea preparation); the British initiated tea-growing in India; the loss of the American colonies was sparked by a tea-related revolution; and even now, Britons drink on average 165 million cups of tea per day. Yet, as with all oft-repeated habits, we think little of it. Dunk a teabag in hot water, splash in some milk, and in those two minutes, all the wealth and ceremony that tea enjoyed when it was first brought to the UK in the 1660s is forgotten.

However, one man, Nirmal Sethia has made revitalising the time-honoured rituals of tea drinking his life’s mission. As well as founding the luxury tea business, Newby Teas, he is owner of the largest collection of teapots and tea-related pieces in private hands. It amounts to some 1,700 examples.

‘Mr Sethia wants to rekindle an interest in the rituals of tea drinking,’ says Olivia Fryman, curator of the collection. ‘The pieces shed light on the way that tea was drunk, on the time and care taken to make a cup of tea, the money that people spent on teaware, and the social cachet of drinking tea.’