Tea Bags Collection

Club Goals

To gather every tea bag  collector, or collectionist of any other item related to tea like: labels, boxes, cans, tea pots, cups, etc. The idea is to exchange these items, increase and improve the collections, share and make friends with a common interest.

 If you would like to join the club, just send me an e-mail

A Little History 

Tea Bag Envelopes? Say what?!

This is a hobby as any other, although it requires patience and much and detailed observation. The tea bag envelopes are the outter wrapping –generally made of paper or aluminum- that protects the tea bag from deteriorating by external agents such as light and humidity; and since the invention of publicity they are integral part of the marketing and promotion of each company. 

But, if we make some history, this wasn’t really the motivation to pack the tea. Since the XIV century until more or less 1820 only loose tea was sold. By that year the European merchants sold it mixed or pure and stored it in wooden boxes. 

It was the Englishman John Horniman who introduced the first really packed tea in an effort to tempt other markets (to whom he had to send light and manageable samples). The idea of buying tea for “a name”, that is after a trademark, wasn’t well reeived until the end of the XIX century, when the companies decided to commercialize their tea in this way.

Then, important marketing campaigns were produced and they created new packagings, with different designs, sober or colourful, and publicity, which helped to increase the competition and the great number of trade marks we can observe today. 

Around 1908 Thomas Sullivan began to send little bags or “tea bags”which in a first stage were made of silk, afterwards gauze and lastly –like nowadays- of strained paper.

Just in 1960 the outter wrapping of the tea bag begun to be a fashion. 

Today we can find wrappings and tea bags of multiple shapes and colours: square, rounded, pyramidal, with one or two divisions, thermosealed, with or without labels…