Tea-table [ Furniture & Interior decoration / Rituals & Ceremonies / Eating & Drinking ]
… infusion of the oxidized and prepared leaves of Camellia sinensis , in Britain in the late seventeenth century. While coffee drinking had become almost ubiquitous in London and provincial cities by the 1670s, the same was not true for tea, … the 1650s. Tea drinking was not commonplace in Britain until the second decade of the eighteenth century or later. While coffee consumption was closely associated with the public socializing of the coffee-house, tea was strongly marked, from its inception, by its association with high status socializing, with women …
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