My abiding interest in tea and tea cultures manifests not only in acquiring, using and consuming tea and teawares, but also in a thirst for knowledge and reference materials in the form of books about tea and tea-related topics. It’s important for me to be able to look things up when I need to, and [...]
The Learning Tea is an innovative project started by Katrell Christie, owner of Dr. Bombay’s Underwater Tea Party, a tea house in Atlanta. Driven by a passionate desire to help the young people she encountered during her 2009 trip to Darjeeling, India, she started the tea company as a way to fund educational opportunities and [...]
This is a teapot that I bought from Brett of Black Dragon Tea Bar several weeks ago. It was acquired during his most recent tea-related travels in Taiwan. Before seasoning it had a darker, very waxy, shiny surface on the outside, but it mellowed into the dusty surface it has now. It’s quite a photogenic [...]
There is good reason why royalty was associated with the finer things in life. Kings and government meant taxes, and if gold couldn’t be had, your locality paid in other forms. If your locality was recognized for horses, you worked to contribute your best horses as a form of tax. The emperors of China were [...]
Near the end of March I had the honor of attending the Urasenke-Foundation hosted Founder’s Day Tea Ceremony at Shoseian (“Arbor of the Murmuring Pines”), inside of the Seattle Japanese Garden. The following month I attended the lecture/demonstration of Chanoyu at Seattle Art Museum, again sponsored by the Urasenke Foundation. Details on these two experiences [...]
The Association of Tea Bloggers is hosting a series of blog carnivals, which are round-ups of posts centered around one theme and published on the same day. For more details on the tea blog carnival project read this post on the ATB web site. Brett of Black Dragon Tea Bar, finding the specialness in a [...]
This is my contribution to the first in a series of tea blog carnivals sponsored by the Association of Tea Bloggers, the theme of which is, “What is your favorite piece of teaware, and why?” While it was a bit of a challenge to choose just one item of tea ware among so many that [...]
