Around 50 years ago, Marcia Morgan’s co-worker told her she’d live longer if she collected something. It took a few years of pondering, but Morgan’s English background led her to tea — but not to collecting tea cups or spoons, as some might. Instead, Morgan took to collecting tea strainers — those tools that sit over or in the cup, collecting tea leaves. The hobby slotted nicely with a case of wanderlust.
“They’re small, so you can put them in a backpack and all that,” Morgan, an avid traveler, told the Source. “I got my first one in Holland in 1978.” These days, Morgan has a collection of 420 tea strainers from her travels all around the world; sterling silver pieces from the Netherlands and other parts of Europe; melamine pieces from the post-WWII days; wood pieces from Africa… even tea straws, called bombillas, for sipping mate from Argentina. The pieces sit on display in Morgan’s home on Awbrey Butte in Bend, labeled by region, with notes about particular styles.
Morgan thought her collection may very well be the largest in the world, so she sought out the people at the Guinness Book of World Records to inquire.
“I’ve been told several times that nobody has a collection this big, but as it turns out, you have to have 1,000 pieces in a collection of something for them even to consider it,” Morgan said. The collection, however, was recently recognized by another entity: Tea Time magazine, a national publication that, “proclaims the pleasures of tea as a gourmet beverage,” its website describes. Morgan’s collection is featured in the Autumn 2026 edition of the magazine, with photos taken by her husband, former Bend Police Chief Andy Morgan, who took up photography after his law enforcement career.
After a career as a criminologist herself, Marcia Morgan hopes to see her collection move on to being a teaching tool. Tea, after all, has played a role in a number of resistance movements, including the American Revolution and the suffragist movement.
“Women, when they were trying to get the right to vote, met under the guise of tea,” Morgan said. But along with serving cakes and tea, suffragists of the early 20th century were also organizing to see the passage of the 19th Amendment. “That was an acceptable thing — for them to gather to have tea,” Morgan explained. Because of that, Morgan hopes to see her collection one day land in a museum dedicated to women’s liberation.
As Morgan put it, “I’ve worked my whole career in helping women get a voice.”
Morgan has given several talks about her tea-strainer collection and the history of tea around Central Oregon, and hopes to do more.
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