Food - Drink
The Evolution Of The Tea Strainer
By ELIAS NASH
Tea is a beverage that has been around for thousands of years and was reserved as medicinal until the third century A.D. In China, the tea leaves were rather large and there was no worry about them floating in a cup, but the British came up with a smaller variety of leaves and some sort of straining device became necessary.
Strainers were popularized in Victorian England with the debut of strainer baskets and slotted spoons. In the 1800s, tea strainers were made using luxurious materials like sterling silver by companies like Gorham Manufacturing and Tiffany & Co., but stainless steel was used as a more affordable material for lower economic brackets.
The invention of the tea bag changed everything and it can be traced back to two different times. In 1908, Thomas Sullivan sold tea in silk pouches and his customer didn’t know to remove the tea from them, however, seven years earlier, Roberta C. Lawson and Mary Molaren filed a patent for a tea bag they called the “tea leaf holder.”