For about two-hundred fifty years, local artisans in Tunbridge Wells produced useful wooden articles decorated with ingenious wooden mosaics. The products became known as "Tunbridge Ware" (often written these days as "Tunbridgeware"). There were small boxes of every imaginable size and purpose, tea caddies, bowls, salad spoons, bookends, earrings, music stands, flower stands, spinning wheels, sewing thimbles, needle cases, small tables, writing desks, cribbage boards, chess and backgammon boards — the list stretches on and on.

During the 18th and 19th Centuries, almost every shop in the Pantiles had some Tunbridge Ware on sale. It quickly became the most popular souvenir of a visit to the Wells. Naturally The Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum has an impressive collection of tea-related Tunbridge Ware on display.

Tunbridge Ware reached its peak of popularity — and fame — during the 19th century, when it was highly esteemed throughout Great Britain. The young Princess Victoria reputedly bought many pieces of Tunbridge Ware as gifts. In 1826, the town gave Victoria a unique Tunbridge ware work table, "veneered with party-coloured woods from every part of the globe" and "lined with gold tufted satin."

The most creative Tunbridge Ware makers used as many as one-hundred-sixty different woods — most of them rare or exotic — to achieve the different colors you can see in their mosaics. These colors are all natural; no dyes were used in Tunbridge Ware.

Tunbridge Ware box on display at Tunbridge Wells Museum

Reproduced with kind permission of the publishers of Historical and Interesting Views of Tunbridge Wells.

It was also during the 19th Century that the makers of Tunbridge Ware worked out the tessellated mosaic technique for creating designs composed of minute wooden squares of different colors. This was done through a highly innovative, mass-production process wherein thin layers of different woods were stacked, glued, and cut to make individual rows of the complete mosaic. The skill came in knowing how to stack the wood layers to create one "line" of the finished mosaic image. The great versatility of the technique allowed Tunbridge Ware craftsmen to create a vast variety of decorative bandings and mosaic imagery — many with fine detail that rivals paintings and illustrations. (See photo, left.)

Tunbridge Ware was last manufactured commercially in 1939, although there are still a few skilled craftsman who keep the mosaic-making technique alive today. When you visit Tunbridge Wells today, you can see an unrivalled collection of Tunbridge Ware on display at the Tunbridge Wells Museum and Art Gallery, in the Civic Center (next to the Town Hall). Alas, you won't seen the "All the Teas of China" tea caddy set that plays such an important role in Dead as Scone; it's a purely fictional collection of Tunbridge Ware boxes. If you would like to take home a Tunbridge Ware souvenir for yourself or a gift for a friend, you'll find many items for sale in the town's antique shops. You can also find a surprisingly wide assortment of Tunbridge Ware sold on www.ebay.com.