Elegant bone china cups were first developed at the very end of the 18th century, at the factory of Josiah Spode in Stoke-on-Trent, when the trade with China began to decline and there was a shortage of Chinese porcelain.

Bone china gets its name because it is made of 50% bone ash, the other ingredients being china clay and Cornish stone. The end product is harder than ordinary porcelain, brilliant white and translucent, which allows the light to shine through.

Wedgwood china

English porcelain production has traditionally been concentrated in the Midlands, which is how the region came to be known as the Potteries. Among its great innovators is Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795), whose name became – and continues to be – a byword for fine china.

Wedgwood suffered smallpox early in life, which left him with a weakened knee. This meant he couldn’t work the potter’s wheel very well, and therefore couldn’t work as a potter in his family’s firm in Staffordshire as he’d planned. He left after being refused a partnership in the company and, after a stint at the Spode factory, set up what became known as the Etruria Works in 1769.

Having gained a reputation for the finest quality china, he was appointed court potter to Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, in 1762. He eventually persuaded the Queen to let him use her name – an early example of celebrity endorsement – and his cream-coloured earthenware was duly named Queen’s Ware.

His factory is most famous for the blue-and-white (or occasionally green-and-white) Jasper Ware, which derived its colour from metallic oxides. The white decorations were overlaid on the coloured background in a kind of two-tone process that has been much imitated ever since.

A great social and environmental reformer, Wedgwood was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1783 for inventing a device to measure oven temperatures. When he died, at the age of 64, he left what was then an immense fortune of £500,000. His illustrious line was to continue in more ways than one – his daughter Susanna was the mother of the renowned naturalist Charles Darwin.

Willow Pattern

Perhaps the most famous design on Jasper Ware pottery, from the late 18th century to the present day, has been the Willow Pattern. There is some dispute over who designed the original English Willow Pattern. Some credit it to Josiah Spode in around 1790, others to Thomas Minton in 1792. But whoever devised it was drawing on Chinese inspiration for a half-remembered, half-invented mythical tale of forbidden love and elopement.

It tells of a Mandarin’s daughter, Kung Se, who refuses to marry the nobleman her father has lined up to be her husband. Instead she is in love with the Mandarin’s book-keeper, Chang, and the couple manage to run away during a banquet held to prepare for her betrothal to the Duke. A maid who is sympathetic to their plight helps to hide them, and they eventually reach a secluded island where they set up home and live in happiness for some years. The Mandarin’s warriors finally catch up with them, however, and, when Chang is killed, Kung Se burns herself to death by setting fire to the house. In respect for their love, the gods immortalise them as two doves, who are always seen flying together in the sky in the Willow Pattern depiction of the story.

According to www.spode.co.uk, “The main features of the true Willow Pattern are the bridge with three persons crossing it, the willow tree, the boat, the main tea house, the two birds and the fence in the foreground of the garden’ – all surrounded by a geometric border design.”

Cosies, caddies, bags and tea towels

The tea cosy made its appearance in the mid-19th century. Legend has it that an Irish farmer let his woolly hat fall on to the teapot one day. Perhaps he had nodded off while the tea was brewing, but the hat stayed on the pot for a few minutes. When he got around to pouring his tea, the farmer found it was much hotter – and nicer – than he was used to. So his wife knitted a special cover especially for the pot.

These days, tea cosies come in an amazing range of designs, from the cute to the outrageous.

Glass jars and bottles that arrived from China with the early shipments of tea were the first storage containers and the forerunners of the tea caddy. The earliest caddies were made of silver, crystalware and wood, their elaborate designs reflecting the fact that tea was at first a luxury commodity. The word “caddy” came into use in the late 18th century, and derives from an Oriental measure known as a kati – roughly 1lb 5oz, or 0.6 kg.

Ostentatious tea caddies were eventually replaced by a simple tin or box for storing loose-leaf tea. In the 1960s, no home could afford to be without a wall-mounted plastic tea caddy. This must-have was fitted with a push-button dispenser that released just the right amount of tea into the pot.

Although many people were a little sniffy about them at first, tea bags gradually came to replace the caddy by the 1950s. Nevertheless, many people still like to store their tea bags in a tin or wooden box, rather than taking them straight from the packet.

The tea towel has long outgrown its humble function as a cotton cloth for drying crockery.

Commemorative and souvenir tea towels are big business these days. As well as celebrating events such as royal weddings, a tea towel could also be a memento of a visit to a special attraction, or a holiday in the Lake District.