tea chest

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A wooden box, made of light material and lined with thin sheet-lead, in which tea is exported from China and other tea-growing countries; especially, such a box containing a definite and prescribed amount of tea, otherwise called whole chest (a hundred-weight to 140 pounds or more), now seldom shipped, the smaller packages being spoken of as half-chests (75 to 80 pounds, but the weight varies according to the kind of tea) and quarter-chests (from 25 to 30 pounds). All these boxes, of whatever size, are almost exactly cubical in shape.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun chest for storing or transporting tea