tea
When coffee plantations in Ceylon were devastated by the coffee
rust disease during the middle of the 19th century, plantation
owners turned to tea as an alternative crop. Loolecondera, the
first commercial estate, was planted in 1867 and the first recorded
shipment of tea came five years later in 1872.
Tea was sold as a generic commodity until 1887 when a few
farsighted individuals began to differentiate their product by
marketing it as Ceylon Tea. John Lane Densham of Croydon
was one of the first to sell tea in retail packets under his own
brand name. Being a great advocate of advertising, Densham
believed that unusual tactics were needed to gain an edge over his
competitors. In 1887, Densham registered the brand
Mazawattee based on the words mazaa, which means pleasure
or fun in Hindi, and the Sinhalese watta, a garden. Densham
began using posters with an image of an aged, bespectacled
grandma with her granddaughter to promote the Mazawattee
brand. Before long, the name Mazawattee was everywhere and
the painting, known as Old Folks at Home had become
synonymous with the brand.
Another who popularized Ceylon Tea was John Hagenbeck, a
ship chandler, trader and animal collector from Hamburg.
Hagenbeck first arrived in Ceylon in 1886 and established himself
as a dealer of wild animals. He later acquired tea and cocoa
plantations whose produce was sold in Germany under the
Hagenbeck Thee brand.
Since posters were a powerfully effective and economical
medium of advertising, by 1890 almost every tea importer in
Europe and North America was using eye-catching posters and
calendars to promote their brands. Maravilla, Dalu Kola, Ceylindo,
Wills, and the ubiquitous Lipton, with its slogan Direct from the
Tea Gardens to the Teapot, were some of the well-known brands
in Great Britain while Bohringer, Sumangala, Saman, and
Chinbara were popular in Europe.