Object: Tea Caddy
Date: 1938
Category: Kitchenware
Museum Listing: CAMFK: 44.39
Price of Adoption: £50.00/month
This tea caddy in the shape of a chapel was donated to the Museum of Cambridge by Queen Mary, upon her visit in 1938. It is an example of the Queen’s love of antiques collecting and her particular interest in miniatures and figurines with this object in the shape of a miniature replica of the ‘Belle Vue Chapel’.
The caddy is reminiscent of a doll house, which Queen Mary was particularly interested in as her magnificent doll house at Winsor Castle would attest.
This object is a particularly exquisite example of an 18th-19th-century wooden tea caddy. While most caddies were simply box-shaped, this example has been crafted to evoke the architecture of a building and inlaid to decorate in the style of a Neoclassical building.