Georgian Novelty Apple Fruit Tea Caddy

From our Tea Caddy collection, we are delighted to offer this superb Georgian Apple Treen Tea Caddy. The Tea Caddy carved from Sycamore as a novelty Apple with a button stalk, shaped body and shaped cut steel escutcheon. When opened the Caddy reveals traces of the original tin foil lining for housing Tea leaves. The Apple Fruit Tea Caddy dates to the Georgian period during the reign of George III Circa 1800.

The Tea Caddy comes complete with working lock and tasselled key.

Sycamore also known as Harewood is a member of the Maple family, found in Europe. It is light yellow in colour and is often a very clean wood, with a straight, fine grain. The wood is often pippy. However, these pips are usually a very similar colour to the rest of the wood making them hardly visible.

Treen (of a tree) is a generic name for smaller handmade household objects made specifically of wood. Treen is distinct from furniture including clocks and is specific to smaller items such as snuff boxes and smaller novelty pieces such as this Tea Caddy. Until the late 17th century the majority of household items such as boxes and tableware were carved from wood and it wasn’t until the end of the Renaissance that silver, pewter, and ceramics objects started to become introduced into society. The longevity of wooden objects was extremely low compared to the newer materials that were introduced and therefore collectors find Treen objects highly desirable due to their rarity, clean examples such as this Tea Caddy are rare to find in good untouched condition from these earlier periods.

Georgian refers to a period in British history dating from 1714-1837, the Georgian era after the Hanoverian kings George I, George II, George III and George IV.

Measurements (centimeters) 10cm High x 11cm Diameter