TeaForum.org

So much information on classic American tea-culture seems invisible online, I think because its roots are locked up in the archives of the traditional American women's magazines: Better Homes & Gardens, Good Housekeeping, Woman's Day, McCall's, Ladies' Home Journal, Redbook, and Family Circle, once nicknamed "The Seven Sisters".

So I thought this might be a good thread to catalog tea-related things from their archives.

Some Redbook advice from 1962. I think this would be considered around the end of the period of their influence on American tea-culture, although I'm not sure. Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" would be published next year, bringing all of the women's magazines under criticism and starting a decline in their readership, while during the 70s interest in tea turned to herbalism of the Celestial Seasonings variety. This was 20 years before the publishing of James Norwood Pratt's "Tea Lover's Treasury", which started the modern era of tea-appreciation in the U.S.

Both methods of preparing tea offered are for spiced teas. The tea is served with lemon, although it is acknowledged that milk could be an option. They are using Ceylon and Ceylon-style teas rather than Chinese, Taiwanese, or Japanese teas, as can be seen by the warning to brew the tea no longer than 5 minutes. However, one of the tea recipes also suggests simmering the prepared tea for 10 minutes, while the other suggests leaving the spices in the tea and keeping it hot, perhaps over a tea-candle or something similar.

The food pictured is heavy meat and butter or mayonnaise based, but served in small portions, probably to help avoid the stomach upset that would happen from drinking these milkless Ceylon teas without something to balance them.

Even though tea bags are used, there is still an insistence on using teapots.

A 1949 Woman's Day ad from the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, which eventually became one of America's largest grocery store chains, "A&P", dropping the association to their former life as a teashop.

Similar to the 60s Redbook recipes, only in iced form.

Nectar tea was originally a Chinese blend tea back when it was first created as "Thea-Nectar", but may have become Ceylon or Ceylon-type by 1949. The U.S. trade embargo with China started in 1950, and would last until 1972.

From a 1946 article in Ladies' Home Journal on the American art of flower-arrangement. Not sure whether "Mrs. Stassen" is a reader, an expert, or a sort of imaginary example person like Betty Crocker, sadly. Were the Japanese and American flower-arrangement schools influenced by each other somehow, or did they develop independently?

*Edit: Edited to re-arrange the photos -- apparently you need to upload them in reverse order to show up correctly.

Always interesting reading these threads!

mbanu wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 29, 2020 7:24 am

I like this cover image a lot. The woman is posed in such a way that she, together with the chair and teacup, resembles a teapot. Also, the way the colors of the cup+saucer matches the chair seems to suggest that just as the chair serves to hold the woman up, the cup serves to support something as well: either the tea, in which case the woman is likened to the tea (a smooth, voluptuous, dark yet light and airy tea) or the unseen guest, who will be supported by drinking the tea.

From a 1960 issue of Ladies' Home Journal, advice for making "Japanese" tea, which was black Ceylon tea spiced with preserved ginger. I think this was when awareness of Japanese tea was at its lowest, as the American export industry had been more or less destroyed by World War II, and the popularity of bancha as a health food arriving in the U.S. as part of the "Zen Diet" Macrobiotics movement was still several years in the future.

This is a good example of an American tea-kettle when there was still widespread awareness of tea-kettles in America, though. (It could be compared to a British Simplex copper kettle, the difference being that the American kettle is made of steel with the exterior coated in copper, while a Simplex-style kettle would be made of copper and then lined with tin.)

The alternative to steel was aluminum, which was once popular in the U.S. as a tea-kettle material similar to its current popularity in India. The shape remained remarkably stable, as can be seen by this Mirro aluminum kettle from a 1921 Ladies' Home Journal. (Eventually modernist design made its way to tea-kettles introducing the lidless kettle, the inconvenience of which I suspect helped lead to the tea-kettle's death as a common household utensil in the U.S.)

Also from a 1921 Ladies' Home Journal, an ad from the Sunkist citrus growers cooperative promoting tea with lemon. The language, "Tea is served today with lemon -- according to the vogue" suggests that this was around the time this style of tea was popularized, as it would not need that kind of language if lemon in tea was taken for granted at the time.

Also an example of what has been a common thread throughout American tea-history, which is that a good way to encourage a drinker to switch teas is to promise health benefits

mbanu wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 29, 2020 3:24 pm

(Eventually modernist design made its way to tea-kettles introducing the lidless kettle, the inconvenience of which I suspect helped lead to the tea-kettle's death as a common household utensil in the U.S.)

An example of what I mean from a 1953 issue of Ladies' Home Journal.

From a 1950 issue of Ladies' Home Journal, an early glass teapot. This is a bit interesting because it seems to be describing what is popular in China today as the "top-putting" brewing method, although I'm not sure if you would get the same temperature change if the kettle is also the teapot; at one time British travelers used this brewing method as an example of why Americans don't understand how to make British tea.

A unique Hall China teapot from a 1948 issue of Ladies' Home Journal, the "Aladdin" design. Right above it an ad for Nabisco when they were more likely to mention that Nabisco is an abbreviation of "National Biscuit Company" -- interesting to see that the biscuits are being used to make homemade sandwich cremes using cream cheese.

I think that sandwich cremes, both store-bought and home-built, may have been the most popular type of American tea-biscuit. In this 1931 Good Housekeeping ad Oreo is joined by its long-lost cousins Triton, Doris, Manor, Filigree, and Social Tea (which I believe is still being made.)

In 1948, Oreo still had a competitor in the form of Hydrox, who seemed to be claiming in this Ladies' Home Journal ad (and, given the appearance, maybe correctly) that Oreo was a knock-off. Interesting to see something like an Oreo described as an "English-style cookie".

Tea also made its way into ads for other products, such as this 1947 Ladies' Home Journal ad for Windex glass-cleaner. I think this is also interesting because it illustrates a long American custom of teaching little girls to have pretend tea-parties to practice their socialization skills.