Tea Tins

"Tea Tins"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
Watercolour
US$ 15.00

I like buying tea. I like it almost more than drinking tea, and I have more leaf tea than I know what to do with. But that gives me an excuse to buy lots of interesting tea tins, doesn't it!

The prize would be a silver tea tin with a lock; that's what I want for my "collection". Tea used to be such a precious commodity that the owners of a grand house locked the tea in the tin so that the maid wouldn't steal it. That and their tulip bulbs, which at one time were worth more than the entire house and a year's wages for the maid.

What would you, modern twenty-first-century man or woman, lock in a box so the maid couldn't steal it? Your laptop? Your mobile phone?