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Ty-Phoo Tea

Birmingham, England, United Kingdom (Publisher, Distributor)

In the 1890s, John Sumner Jr. (1856–1934) took over his family's grocery business in Birmingham and, in 1903, developed a specialty product, a tea made the fannings (tips) of tea leaves that was marketed to aid indigestion and nervous disorders. He named the product Ty-phoo Tipps (typhoo being, in part, the Chinese word for doctor). Typhoo Tea, Ltd. became a private company in 1905, and in 1906, Sumner began to insert advertising cards of various subjects in the boxes of loose tea. These eventually included: Flowering Trees and Shrubs (1924), Wild Flowers in their Families (1935), and Trees of the Countryside (1937).

Ty-Phoo Tea Canister
Ty-Phoo Tea Canister