Tea from China became available in England in the late 17th century. Initially, its cost and rarity made it a fashionable drink for the wealthy but over the course of the 18th century its increasing availability saw it enjoyed by the population at large. Chinese tea was always accompanied by sugar imported from Britain’s colonies in the West Indies where it was produced by enslaved African workers. Campaigns to end Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade included boycotts of West Indies-produced sugar.

This trade card was printed to publicise the services of Mowbray & Son, a ‘genuine tea dealers and grocers’ and importer of ‘spices, fish sauces and pickles’ which had an outlet on Newport High Street. Trade cards were a popular form of advertisement and the designer of this card has emphasised the exotic associations of the tropical commodities sold by Mowbray’s. In the foreground of the image sits a man in a form of Chinese dress on a crate with a Chinese pagoda and a sailing ship visible behind him. To the left, a black man dressed only in a loincloth rolls a barrel or ‘hogshead’ of the kind used to transport colonial goods such as unprocessed sugar and tobacco along a beach. The scene is fringed with palm trees.