All About Tea

REPRINT. Special Description Note- This is not a print on demand edition. Care has been taken to enhance and improve the original text whenever possible. Martino Publishing follows the standards of traditional printing and quality is a primary concern. We distinguish ourselves from Print on Demand by our quality controls, paper quality and binding quality. Hardbound. Octavo. Two volumes bound in one. fronts. (1 col.) illus. (incl. music) diagrs. 1143 pages. New York, The Tea and coffee trade journal company, 1935.In this book Ukers claimed to have assembled, in their right order, all the essential facts about tea. This flyleaf declaration is no idle boast. In two volumes of 54 chapters and 1143 pages, is an authoritative compendium of information on historical, technical, scientific, commercial, social, and artistic aspects of tea. The origin of tea is lost in mists of antiquity; legend ascribes it to the reign of Shen Nung, a mythical Chinese emperor of the third millennium B.C. The first credible mention is placed at 350A.D. From there the story is carried through the introduction of tea into Japan, Europe, England, and America; through the romantic age of trade on the clipper ships-"Oriental," "Stag Hound," "Flying Cloud," "Lightning," "Westward Ho," "Taeping," "Ariel"; and through the spread of tea culture into Java, Sumatra, India, Ceylon, and other lands. A description of the world's leading growths of tea, with their market names and generalcharacteristics, is followed by a technical account of cultivation and manufacture in each of the principal producing countries, and an illuminating resume of the evolution of tea machinery. Under "scientific aspects" are chapters on the etymology,botany and histology, chemistry, pharmacology, and healthfulness of tea. The largest portion of the work, as might be expected, deals with commercial history and practice, which are set forth in panoramic, rather than dynamic, fashion. "Social Aspects" treat of tea as the "handmaiden of fashion and refinement," of present-day tea manners and customs and their relation to the art of leisure; of appliances and the art of tea-making; of ideas which enter into and grow from the inducements of advertisers. The final section deals with the celebration of tea in the fine arts. An appendix contains a tea chronology, a tea dictionary, and an exhaustive bibliography of 23 pages in fine print. A classic and still essential work. Lavishly illustrated.