Objects from the BPMA on loan to Dr. Johnson's House
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Tea and coffee are so familiar today that it's hard to imagine a time when they were considered both exotic luxuries and suspicous entities, thought capable of miracle cures or devilish effects. This was, however, the case until the seventeenth century. During the latter half of the 1600s, however, the proliferation of coffee houses in the capital helped turn coffee into an acceptable drink and social ritual.
Coffee houses in London became an important place in the trading community. When you wished to find a particular businessman you would enquire at his local coffee house rather than his home.
Coffee houses therefore became a place people often had their letters delivered to. One such businessman was James Gordon, a wine merchant who regularly had letters delivered to the Jamaica Coffee House, at Cornhill, London.
Today, the BPMA hold a number of covers addressed to Gordon at his coffee house and it is one of these that has been loaned. The handstamp was used at the Baltic Coffee House.
The exhibition will open at Dr. Johnson's House, 17 Gough Square, London, EC4A 3DE and runs from 26 September to 13 December 2008. For more details please visit Dr Johnson's House