This weekend tea people from all over the Pacific Northwest and beyond will gather at Seattle Center for the 5th annual Northwest Tea Festival. The festival has gotten larger and better each year, and I am confident that this year will be one you will not want to miss. Unlike many of the large scale [...]
Tomorrow, March 24th, from 1:30pm until 2:30pm, the Seattle Chinese Garden will host a Han Style Chinese Tea Ceremony, presented by Mei Collier, owner of Eight Cranes. Ms. Collier is a frequent speaker at the Asian Museum in Pasadena, and at many California universities. After she heads back to California, she will conduct a tea [...]
For people within striking distance of Seattle, there are still a few more days to to see “Chado: The Way of Tea,” an exhibit of work by Miya Ando at ArtXchange Gallery in Pioneer Square. Sculptor Ando is descended from Japanese sword makers and has embraced her heritage of fine metal-working, along with a large [...]
Sponsored by Puget Sound Tea Education Association, the fourth annual Northwest Tea Festival will be held this coming weekend in Fisher Pavilion at Seattle Center. The event will include at least 16 vendors and a robust roster of speakers and presenters, including James Norwood Pratt, Michael J. Coffey, Becky Lee, Brett Boynton, and Jason Chen. [...]
A little over a year ago I started a tea company called Phoenix Tea Shop. I worked on sourcing good teas and products during the subsequent months (along with branding and building the websites), and managed to find a lot of great connections and opportunities. But I never really wanted to tackle this project single-handedly. [...]
On the Sunday of the inaugural weekend of the Infusions show at SLAB Art in Ballard, a few exceptionally fortunate tea aficionados had the rare opportunity to participate in a round of tea tastings hosted by artists using their own teaware. The arrangement of the show displays all of the teaware pieces exceptionally well, most [...]
Opening this coming Saturday, March 26th, at SLAB Art in Ballard, Infusions will center around an exhibition of teaware by contemporary ceramic artists immersed in the vibrant and growing Pacific Northwest tea culture, and will also feature tea tables made by the woodworking artists at SLAB. On Sunday following the show opening there will be [...]
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 [...]
There are tea mascots that are entirely charming and wonderful. Of course I am partial to my wonderful bat, who I decided to name Xingfu (幸福), and who sits at the tea table during nearly every session of Gongfu Cha, receiving frequent doses of tea and water over his shiny clay body. But there are [...]
Weekend before last, at the Second Annual Northwest Tea Festival, Marcus of Teahouse Kuan Yin gave me a very unusual fang cha pu’er to try. (“Fang Cha” are single cup or mug sized, square, flat pu’er cakes.) I was told that this curious little square block of tea was made with a coffee bean in [...]
