Now you might be wondering about this card, but it turns out that despite the popularity of Turkish coffee, tea is pretty big in Turkey, as well as their part of Cyprus - and the country drinks more tea per head than anywhere else on the globe. Even odder is that they also manage to make enough tea to be the fifth largest exporter to other countries as well.
It all began late though, towards the end of the nineteenth century, when Russia introduced tea to the Turkish to expand their own customer base. Russia had got their tea from China, as little plants, and they had prospered, so the Russians did what we today call a taste test, picking a town, Bursa, and sending them a few seedlings. It was pretty unsuccessful though, as the area was very unsuitable - which suggests that the Russians had perhaps merely stuck a pin in a map rather than travelling to Turkey. Although we do know that the Bursa area was well known to the Chinese, who used to buy and sell silk there, so maybe that was part of the reason for the selection.
More recently things have not been going so well though. Global warming is quite severely affecting Turkey and making it much hotter and wetter, and these are both fatal to tea plants, they cannot abide direct sunlight, and if the roots get too wet they just wither away. All the countries we have mentioned so far are in the same position. However, of them all, Turkey is the one which is spending lots of effort in combating the problem, including importing other varieties of tea plants from hotter areas.
Here we have another set from the mysterious Chocolate Jux. And it was chosen because unlike the other two sets we have featured before ("En L`An 2000", our Card of the Day for the 11th of April, 2025, and "La Vie du Soldat" which appeared on Thursday the 11th of September in our newsletter of the 6th of September, 2025), our card today actually adds a new item to their top line menu "et The" which means and tea. At least that is what I thought originally, but now I`m not so sure, because if you look at those other two cards, without the mention of the tea, they could well be later. For one thing, they both call Monsieur Jux a "Confiseur - Chocolatier", which mean confectioner and chocolate maker, whilst our card only has the first word. They both also mention "Usine a Vapeur", which means steam power, and also an award, "Medaille d`Argent, Exposition Universelle 1900". That all makes me think today`s card is earlier, before the 1900 Exhibition.
There is also something else rather intriguing, because I started to make a list of the cards, and recognised one, "ECOSSE - La Gigue", and I was right, we showed that card before, our Card of the Day for the 10th of September, 2024 - but it was issued by Liebig, as part of a set called "Danses Nationale", coded F.621, or S.620.
In fact, and I`m really surprised at this, all four of the Jux cards I have tracked down so far are also in that set, and they are :
- ALLEMAGNE - Danse Rustique
- ECOSSE - La Gigue
- FRANCE - Le Cotillon
- TURQUIE - La Danse du Sabre
the missing ones from the Liebig set are
- Italy - La Tarantelle (tarantella)
- Tirol - La Rapide (no idea!)
so does anyone have these in the Jux printing, which would make it a set of six cards, or any different dances in the Jux printing?