Though still an expensive commodity, by the early 1700’s, tea had been introduced across all levels of society. The leaf had become available to purchase from ‘Coffee houses’, ‘India houses’, and apothecaries, and servants in England began to receive the drink as part of their wages. By the 1720’s competition between European trading companies drove the price of tea down and in 1745 the excise tax on the leaf was reduced. By the 1750’s the desire for table wares and hot drink utensils had created such an extensive market that these objects became common in English homes. By 1750 the early development of salt and lead glazing had taken place in Staffordshire and redware teapots began to appear with glazed surfaces. It is likely that the Brown Betty first became a familiar object around this period along with the mass acceptance of tea as a drink and the start of British industrial pottery production.
By the mid 1800’s there were numerous factories producing the Brown Betty in various shapes, sizes and styles and a shift had taken place. These pots had become cheaper (reflecting industrial prices and the lower cost of tea). Amongst the more notable firms making these were household names such as Gibson&Sons and Sadler, a slogan in one of their adverts reads ‘Cheap – but good’. There is no single identifiable designer or maker and no single definitive version: these objects are anonymous and evolved.
Over the years, Brown Betty has been through the hands of numerous makers; each producing their own interpretation, and subtly refining and amalgamating new and original design details. The resulting teapot is often a rational design stripped of anything superfluous to its function or production - the globe shape of the pot that is so efficient at infusing loose leaf tea, the roughly cut spout that breaks the flow of water, preventing tea from dribbling back down the outside of the pot and the Rockingham glaze that concealed any dribbles that did, despite best efforts, escape.
