Edward
Bramah, founder of the Bramah Museum has had over fifty years
of experience in all aspects of tea and coffee. His work in the
coffee and tea trade has taken him to Africa, India, China and
Japan, and he maintains important links with these countries.
After working initially as a planter on a tea estate in Malawi,
Edward Bramah was trained as a tea taster by J. Lyon & Co., and
then worked with Kenya Coffee Auctions, a coffee brokerage firm
in Kenya and Tanzania.
By 1956 he was working with the China National Tea Corporation
to restore China's tea trade with Britain. In 1966 he founded
a tea and coffee company under his own name and developed an interest
in designing coffee filter machines. About this time that he began
collecting the materials that now comprise the Bramah Museum of
Tea and Coffee.
He
had the idea for the Museum of Tea and Coffee in 1952, and forty
years later, in 1992, founded the Museum by the river Thames near
the City of London where tea and coffee had been imported into
Britain for centuries.
His authoritative knowledge of tea and coffee and their history
has led to his being in demand as a lecturer in both the producing
and consuming countries alike.
Edward Bramah, a frequent visitor to Indian (the picture shows
Edward on a recent trip to Darjeeling) and Japan is acknowledged
as a tea-master for traditional English tea. His tea and coffee
seminars are world renown.
Edward Bramah has also published his extensive knowledge of tea
and coffee and their history in a number of books, including:
The earliest Bramah connection with tea would have been in the
1700s when Edward's ancestor Joseph (senior), coachman to the Earl
of Strafford, would have no doubt carried tea for the family. In
the 1750s Joseph's son, also called Joseph, would have been aware
of the Strafford family taking afternoon tea at Silkstow Castle
and been inspired to make wooden tea caddies. Tea was so expensive
at the time that it may indeed have been the inspiration for him
to make his famous lock, often fitted to tea chests
Another relative, the far-seeing Sir Joseph Banks, made the recommendation
to the East India Company that tea growing would be possible in
North East India.