Let’s Chat: River of Tea closed on 27 June 2021. For details of our current exhibitions, take a look at our what’s on page.
We invited you to see an exhibition of Tim Smith’s photographs retracing the route of the early tea trade, and contribute your thoughts about how we should tell stories in our galleries.
River of Tea is a series of photographs by Tim Smith, exploring how the early tea trade sparked the migration of people from Bangladesh to Britain. Created in partnership with communities in Bradford, the display also featured videos and other imagery to bring this fascinating story to life.
Gallery
Bara Bazaar in Shillong, 60 miles north of Sylhet District. Shillong was the British capital of Assam Province during colonial times. British colonialists nicknamed it ‘Scotland of the East’ because of the area’s cool mountains, pine forests and the tartan-style cloth worn by local people.
St Paul’s Cathedral, Kolkata. Completed in 1847 for the growing number of European Anglicans living in the city, the cathedral is still used by today’s Christian community.
Double-decker buses collecting students from the University of Dhaka.
A tame elephant at the Pertabghur Tea Estate factory in Assam. Elephants played an important role on the first tea estates, carrying supplies and crates of tea between the river oats and the estates.
Women preparing the soil for new tea plants on the Tezpore and Gogra Tea Estate, Assam. Tea bushes can produce tea for up to 100 years before they need to be replaced by new plants.
A woman jumps across a drainage ditch on the Monabarie Tea Estate, Assam.
Passengers leap aboard the paddle steamer ‘Mahsud’. The casings that these men are walking on cover the giant paddles that drive the ship. A return journey from Dhaka to Khulna will take three days.
Girls on board the paddle steamer ‘Mahsud’ using water from a hand pump to cool a pair of ducks.
A man painting a newly restored ship at the Keraniganj shipyard, Dhaka.
A natural gas fuel station near Biswanath. There are large deposits of natural gas in Sylhet, which is used to power most of the vehicles on the roads. This pump has a picture of another of Sylhet’s major industries on it: a tea estate.
A woman in a rickshaw passes a sign advertising the British Bangladeshi Partnership, a UK registered charity, in Biswanath.
Street plan of the Little London housing estate in Sylhet. This housing development near the Osmani International Airport in Sylhet is owned by a British Bangladeshi.
Let’s Chat
River of Tea was part of Let’s Chat, a new project offering a way for you to tell us what you want to see at the museum. Feedback from this exhibition will help us shape future exhibitions and displays.
Read more on our blog
We all know that tea enjoys a special place in British culture—but the fascinating story behind the nation’s favourite beverage is rarely told. In this post, Tim Smith explores that story and explains how it inspired River of Tea.
Read the blog post: The story behind River of Tea
This exhibition was supported with public funding from Arts Council England.
