Object Type
With no Chinese porcelain protypes to copy, British ceramic tea canisters of the 18th century took several different forms. They are mostly, however, square or octagonal with a wide cylindrical lip, and seem to derive from the japanned metal canisters used for displaying and dispensing tea and coffee in grocers' shops. By contrast, smarter tea canisters of glass or silver tended to copy the wooden tea chest, complete with its wavy metal edging and corners. Only later in the century was the little baluster-shaped canister copied by English porcelain factories (for example, Worcester) which imitated Chinese vase-like versions made solely for export.

Design & Designing
Although Staffordshire white stoneware had been perfected by about 1720, its possibilities for mass-production were not fully exploited until the 1740s. Then the techniques of press-moulding, slip-casting and enamelling were developed, and the drabness of the greyish stoneware surface was successfully relieved by the addition of all-over decoration (parallels may be drawn here with the development of British pressed glass after the mid-19th century). At first, desperate for ideas, the Staffordshire makers of block-moulds used old designs taken from Johann Nieuhoff's An Embassy from the East India Company of the United Provinces, to the Grand Tartar Chaim or Emperour of China, first published in English in 1669.