A tea chest is a type of wooden case originally produced and used to ship

tea Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured or fresh leaves of '' Camellia sinensis'', an evergreen shrub native to East Asia which probably originated in the borderlands of south-western China and nor ...

to the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

, and

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

. The conventional tea chest is a case with

rivet A rivet is a permanent mechanical fastener. Before being installed, a rivet consists of a smooth cylinder (geometry), cylindrical shaft with a head on one end. The end opposite the head is called the ''tail''. On installation, the deformed e ...

ed metal edges, of approximate size . Modern tea chests (2023) are made of plywood with metal corners and lined with aluminium foil and parchment paper to provide aroma-proof packaging. They are generally shipped in shipping containers, so modern tea chests are commonly dimensioned to fit in standard shipping containers. The term is now used widely to indicate similarly sized cases, including

corrugated box Corrugated box design is the process of matching design factors for corrugated fiberboard (sometimes called corrugated cardboard) or corrugated plastic boxes with the functional physical, processing and end-use requirements. Packaging engineers w ...

es, produced for various home and commercial uses. Wooden tea caddies are also occasionally referred to as "tea chests". A tea chest holds 42 to 58 kilograms of tea; the size depends on the origin and client. Sizes vary from 400×400×620 to 500×500×750 mm.

History

The traditional construction was of very thin wood held at the edges with metal edges, riveted to the sheets. Internally, tea chests were often lined with

metal foil A foil is a very thin sheet of metal, typically made by hammering or rolling. Foils are most easily made with malleable metal, such as aluminium, copper, tin, and gold. Foils usually bend under their own weight and can be torn easily. For example ...

, and strengthened with inch-by-inch boards at the edges. The foil was stated as

lead Lead () is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Pb (from Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a Heavy metal (elements), heavy metal that is density, denser than most common materials. Lead is Mohs scale, soft and Ductility, malleabl ...

in a Bushell's 1925 advertisement but later changed to

aluminium foil Aluminium foil (or aluminum foil in American English; occasionally called tin foil) is aluminium prepared in thin metal leaves. The foil is pliable and can be readily bent or wrapped around objects. Thin foils are fragile and are sometimes ...

. Tea chests were only used to carry tea once, so they were generally sold for non-food use. They would often be subsequently used for domestic goods storage and house contents moving as they were low cost, light weight, robust and clean. During the 1950s throughout the UK, tea chests began to be used as basic

basses Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Wood * Bass or basswood, the wood of the tilia americana tree Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in the b ...

skiffle Skiffle is a music genre, genre of folk music with influences from American folk music, blues, Country music, country, Bluegrass music, bluegrass, and jazz, generally performed with a mixture of manufactured and homemade or improvised instruments. ...

groups, such as

the Quarrymen The Quarrymen (also written as "the Quarry Men") are a British skiffle and rock and roll group, formed by John Lennon in Liverpool in 1956, which evolved into the Beatles in 1960. Originally consisting of Lennon and several school friends, the ...

. Due to containerisation of shipping and the availability of dry vented containers, the use of tea chests for shipping tea declined in the late 20th century. By the second decade of the 21st century, although tea chests were still used in some cases, tea is most commonly transported in sacks, either polyethylene or multi layer paper, stacked on pallets and packed into clean dry vented shipping containers.

References

{{packaging Food storage containers Tea

History

See also

References