The tea caddy — the container for storing tea, typically lockable in the eighteenth century when tea was an expensive commodity — appears in poems about the domestic economy of the Georgian household and the social ritual of tea; A poem about a Georgian mistress of the house controlling her tea supply might describe the tea caddy's lock: "she kept the key on her chatelaine — the tea locked away as carefully as the silver, the household's small luxury rationed by her hand"; In a poem about the social ritual of tea-making, the tea caddy is the first object handled: "she unlocked it herself — the leaves measured by the spoon she kept inside, the gesture both domestic and sovereign"; Tea caddies in tortoiseshell, silver, papier-mâché, and lacquered wood appear in poems about the decorative arts of the Georgian period: "the caddy more beautiful than the tea — the outside as considered as the inside was precious"; A poem about a grandmother's kitchen might describe a tea caddy still in use: "the tin caddy, its label faded — she measured by eye, not spoon, the right amount for the right number, knowledge in the hand rather than the head"; In a poem about the economics of empire, the tea caddy concentrates the global in the domestic: "the leaves from Assam in a box made in Birmingham, locked with a key kept by a woman in Yorkshire — the empire folded into a thing that fit in the palm."