Some toted their cups to tea parties in special carrying cases. Before that, tea was drunk Chinese style, from a bowl whose saucer served as a lid to keep the tea hot. In eighteenth century England, a tea towel was a special linen drying cloth used by the mistress of the house to dry her precious and expensive china tea things. Mass-produced tea towels were produced during the Industrial Revolution. Today pictorial tea towels make charming and collectible souvenirs.
Tea breaks are a tradition started about two hundred years ago.
Initially, when workers began work at around six in the morning, employers allowed a break at some point in the morning when tea and food were served to the workforce. Some enlightened employers even allowed tea to be served in the late afternoon. However, between 1741 and 1820 various clerics, land-owners and industrialists tried to abolish the tea break, claiming that the imbibing of the tea made the workforce slothful. A fastidious man, he always had his drinking water boiled, convinced that this would protect him from the prevalent diseases of the time. One day, while making a tour of the provinces, Shen Nung requested that his servants boil some water for him.