Who invented the tea bag

Don’t get me wrong, I am not celebrating the tea bag. I will occasionally “roll my own” out of necessity for travel (see future post on best bags for your loose leaf tea), but the tea bag has become a staple for tea drinkers around the world. Many people think this is the only way people enjoy tea today, or maybe that this is the only way people have ever applied tea leaves to hot water. Well, it was all a big mistake. According to sources I have read, the tea bag dates to 1908 and a New York tea importer, Tom Sullivan. Reportedly, he began sending samples of his loose lead tea to retailers using small silk pouches (rather than using the customary tin). Customers not realizing this was merely a shipping convenience steeped the tea right in the silk bags…and the rest is history. Others believe it all started with Roberta C. Larson and Mary Molaren filing a patent 7 years earlier for a “tea leaf holder”. Regardless of origination, sometime later the flat, rectangular tea bag made of porous paper was introduced (1944) and quickly patented (and later improved with the “flo-thru bag” in 1952) by the Lipton Company. Regardless of my views on prepackaged tea bags, these developments made tea more accessible to the masses with much easier steeping and clean-up.