A teahouse or tearoom is an establishment which primarily serves tea and other light refreshments. A tea room may be a room set aside in a hotel, especially for serving afternoon tea, or may be an establishment that only serves cream teas. Although the function of a tearoom may vary according to the circumstance or country, teahouses often serve as centers of social interaction, like coffeehouses.
Tea served in a tea room at the Shantytown Heritage Park in New Zealand
Tea house in Moscow, 2017
A teahouse at night in Yu Yuan Garden, Shanghai
A chaikhaneh (teahouse) in Yazd
Catherine Cranston, widely known as Kate Cranston or Miss Cranston, was a leading figure in the development of tea rooms. She is nowadays chiefly remembered as a major patron of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret MacDonald, in Glasgow, Scotland. The name of Miss Cranston's Tea Rooms lives on in reminiscences of Glasgow in its heyday.
The resolute Kate Cranston around 1903, dressed in the style of the 1850s.
Poster design by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
Mackintosh's design for the frieze at the Buchanan Street tearoom.
Miss Cranston's waitresses, seen in the Room de Luxe of the Willow Tea Rooms.