This particular show of her work is themed around Chado, the Japanese tea ceremony, using the traditional practice as inspiration for the stark metal forms of her abstract steel and aluminum works, and more directly in the pieces that take the form of actual implements of the ceremony.

The tea tools, as re-worked by Ando, become something less and also more than their utilitarian counterparts, made more stark through a shift in their materials. One set has received a coating of graphite, creating a dramatic, fragile black sheen. Another set of pieces is recast in aluminum, replacing the warm organic bamboo with cold metal. In both cases the beauty of the forms of the tea tools is illuminated, while the functionality is absent, which is a curious transformation.

What does it mean for a tool – in this case one designed and crafted for the express purpose of preparing tea using a very specific and measured set of behaviors and protocols – to be reduced to pure symbol and aesthetic object? Does this allow for a more objective perception of the beauty of the object, or does it somehow lose a part of its meaning? It may not be so simple to determine, and it is possible that the symbolic aspects of the tea tools bear the greatest weight for Ando in their place in the traditional art forms of Japan, not in any contemporary application of tea practice.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Come to the Northwest Tea Festival!
• Phoenix rising
• Da Hong Pao among the mists
• New storage for pu’er
• The art of tea art: Infusions at SLAB Art

The following are few recommendations of presentations or educational opportunities that you may want to take advantage of. There are also a wide range of tasting opportunities throughout both days, including one that I am presenting, which is a comparison tasting of two white teas, one from China and one from Kenya.

SATURDAY

The Common Wealth: Tea in Community Life
James Norwood Pratt
“Humans drink more tea than any other beverage. It is humanity’s favorite habit and a treasure of the world: nothing has contributed more to our enjoyment of leisure, friendship, sociability and conversation, which is why mankind’s love affair with tea has now lasted 5000 years. The history of that love affair has involved not only agriculture and business but also medicine, religion, finance and fine arts – but always human relations above all. Treat yourself to a trip into the mind of America’s foremost tea historian and storyteller and you will never think of tea quite the same way again.”

Tea Chemistry: Reactions in Leaf and Cup
Michael J. Coffey
“All of the amazing flavors, colors, and aromas in a cup of pure tea are the result of chemical reactions–in the tea plant, during the preparation of the leaf, or during the process of brewing and drinking a cup. We will look at some of the major reactions and what they mean to your tea drinking experience. This is not a beginner’s class; participants should at least know what basic processing differences lead to green, wulong, and black teas.All of the amazing flavors, colors, and aromas in a cup of pure tea are the result of chemical reactions–in the tea plant, during the preparation of the leaf, or during the process of brewing and drinking a cup.”

Learning Professional Tea Terms in Chinese
Becky Li & Issac Dumiel
“This is a 2-part workshop presentation. In the first section, Ms. Li will explain a selection of professional terms in Chinese used to describe and evaluate tea in mainland China and Taiwan, with a focus on concepts that have no exact analogs in English. In the second section, Mr. Dumiel will present a small selection of traditional Chinese texts on tea preparation, tasting and etiquette, introducing some of the fundamental concepts in Chinese tea culture. This presentation is intended for persons who are already familiar with Chinese teas, but not fluent in Chinese. Attendees will learn key concepts Chinese people use to understand and discuss tea and how these ideas differ from both the professional terms and general culture associated with tea in the West. You will also learn how to appreciate Chinese tea following the concepts indigenous to its tradition.”

SUNDAY

Tea Roasting Class
Shiuwen Tai
“Are you a tea drinker who is just excited by a lot of teas and tend to buy more than what you can drink? In this class, Shiuwen will show you how to refresh a stale tea and you will get to practice it. She will also cover some different ways that you can refresh or roast your tea at home. Participants will get to taste a stale tea, the same tea that has been worked on in the class, and the same tea that has been roasted from a tea roaster.”

Japanese Tea Ceremony
Ako Yoshino & Pearl Dexter
“Presented by Ms. Ako Yoshino, a senior instructor of Japanese tea ceremony academy and tea lecturer at Shizuoka university, this special presentation will invite you to the world of traditional Japanese tea ceremony.”

Consult the festival schedule for details. There are a lot of additional events and happenings. Some of the events require sign-ups ahead of time, so you’ll do well to plan ahead. If you come to the festival – and you should – be sure to stop by the Phoenix Tea booth and say “hello” to me. I’ll be the one who isn’t Brett.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Chado: The Way of Tea, at ArtXchange
• World Tea Expo 2011
• Phoenix rising
• The art of tea art: Infusions at SLAB Art
• Infusions: an exhibit of teaware by local Pacific Northwest artists

But I never really wanted to tackle this project single-handedly. I wanted someone to work with me to build the business and help define what it would grow into.

A little over a month ago I saw a glimmer of an opportunity when Brett Boynton of Black Dragon Tea Bar announced that after nearly a decade as manager of The Teacup, he was unemployed. So I approached him with the idea of partnering with me in the tea business. We met, we plotted, we schemed – and now I am very pleased to announce that Brett is co-owner of Phoenix Tea.

We have a lot of very exciting ideas in the works, and you’ll be hearing more about them as things progress (although I will continue to ensure that commerce does not interfere with Gongfu Girl blog content, so don’t worry about that). If you want to keep up with us, follow the Phoenix Tea House blog, which is where we’ll put all of the business related news and information. You can also keep up with us on our Facebook page.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Chado: The Way of Tea, at ArtXchange
• Come to the Northwest Tea Festival!
• World Tea Expo 2011
• The art of tea art: Infusions at SLAB Art
• Infusions: an exhibit of teaware by local Pacific Northwest artists

The arrangement of the show displays all of the teaware pieces exceptionally well, most of them laid out on the beautiful pure slabs of gorgeous wood that have been transformed into tables by the talented artisans at SLAB Art. The inner perimeter of the gallery space is lined with slices of some of the most luxurious woods, adding to the rich atmosphere of the space.

Of the four exhibiting artists – Richard Brandt, Geo Lastomirsky, Tina Pepa, and Christopher Shaw – all but Ms. Pepa were on hand for the tastings. Both Brandt and Shaw produce teawares designed for Gongfu Cha, and are connoisseurs of the leaf as well as its brewing and serving implements.

There was a delightful array of teas donated to the event by Shiuwen Tai of Floating Leaves Tea, and Brett Boynton of Black Dragon Tea Bar. The teas consisted primarily of Taiwanese oolongs, but also included a Da Hong Pao and an intriguing Organic Hong Cha from Taiwan. Also, instigated by a conversation with Chris Shaw about aged sencha the previous evening, I provided a Kuradashi Sencha, which brewed excellently (and beautifully) in one of his stoneware pots.

During the first session of tastings I was able to observe the initiation of Richard Brandt’s Wind Moon teapot as it was introduced first to a lightly oxidized Alishan and then to a darker roasted Dong Ding, put through the paces of a Taiwanese Phoenix Mountain Oolong and finally used for the Taiwanese black tea. The transformation was quite something to watch, as the surface of the teapot darkened, speckled, and acquired spidery dark streaks along its front.

The tastings, held over a leisurely four hours, took place in the lower back part of the gallery space as well as in the upstairs exhibition loft, split between the two hosts, Shaw and Brandt. I can say with confidence that all of the participants had an excellent time, including the artists themselves.

Although the opportunity to taste teas in these lovely wares has passed, you can still stop into SLAB Art and view the teawares available for sale this Saturday and Sunday, April 2nd and 3rd and the following weekend. The entire body of work in the show is impressive and varied, and all of the pieces look like objects one would want to hold and use. Even Geo Lastomirsky’s exquisite pieces, kindly on loan from Paccini Lubel Gallery, have a wonderful look to them which can be imagined heightened by a bath of tea liquor.

Photographs, from top to bottom:
Christopher Shaw, taken by Chris
Richard Brandt, taken by Chris
downstairs tasting with Christopher Shaw’s teaware, taken by Cinnabar
upstairs tasting with Richard Brandt’s teaware, taken by Chris

View more photos from the show on my Flickr page and in the Gongfu Girl Flickr Group.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Chado: The Way of Tea, at ArtXchange
• Come to the Northwest Tea Festival!
• Phoenix rising
• How I generally brew shu pu’er
• Da Hong Pao among the mists

On Sunday following the show opening there will be tea tastings offered in the gallery space, with traditional teas provided by Floating Leaves Tea and Black Dragon Tea Bar, prepared and served with the exhibiting artists’ teawares.

Artists displaying their works in the show include Richard Brandt, Chris Shaw and Tina Pepa. In addition to the works on display and for sale, there will be some pieces of teaware from my personal collection to show similarities and contrasts with the new and local work.

(Click image to view entire poster.)

from the press release:

Once known as the home of the latté, Seattle is now steeped in the emerging contemporary tea culture. Drawing equally on traditional influences and current social media—tea blogs are burgeoning—this new trend cuts across all demographics and pulls in anyone who wants to savor a tranquil moment with friends. This inaugural show, Infusions, will highlight the leading edge of the Northwest tea culture, featuring contemporary tea sets from local ceramic artists, tea tables crafted from salvaged wood by Slab Art, and tea tastings with artisanal and traditional tea samples brewed in the artists’ creations.

INFUSIONS:
Design, Fine Craft, & Contemporary Tea Culture
Slab Art, 4919 17th Ave NW, Seattle 98107
March 26 – April 9, 2011

Sat, March 26 – Opening Reception (6-10 pm)
Sun, March 27 – Tea Tastings (10 am-2 pm)
Viewing times after opening by appointment

For additional information, contact Chris Shaw, 206.359.0792. Space is limited, so reservations are recommended for Sunday’s tea tastings. Email infusions@contemporaryclay.org to ensure a spot.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Reading “A Tea Reader”
• Chado: The Way of Tea, at ArtXchange
• Come to the Northwest Tea Festival!
• World Tea Expo 2011
• Phoenix rising

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 can be found in the article I wrote for the May issue of Tea Muse.

The photograph above shows offerings of tea and sweets at the celebration honoring Sen no Rikyu, founder of the Urasenke School.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Chado: The Way of Tea, at ArtXchange
• Come to the Northwest Tea Festival!
• Phoenix rising
• The art of tea art: Infusions at SLAB Art
• Infusions: an exhibit of teaware by local Pacific Northwest artists

But there are also tea mascots that I think are excessively silly and gimmicky, like the little exhibitionist big-headed young boys made out of red clay that pee when water or tea is poured over or into them. Even if their complete lack of elegance and the concept of anything or anyone peeing onto the tea table weren’t bad enough, in my opinion they’re just not in any way appealing or cute.

Last week, emerging from the Seattle Art Museum after attending a very well-done demonstration of Chado, the Japanese powdered tea ceremony – on entirely the other end of the spectrum of dignity as far as tea culture is concerned – I crossed the street and encountered not just one, but an entire windowsill-full of these peeing tea boys. The store was closed at the time, and the effect of the long row of them was very amusing, especially the way they appear to stare through the window, all poised and ready, pointed toward the outside world, but without the ability to pee on anything.

I can only imagine what the two in this next photo did that got them into so much trouble the workers in the shop had to drown them in a glass of water after-hours.

Vital Leaf Teas, the location of this army of clay boys, also has some curiously enormous blocks of pu’er, like these two installed into the back of a bench or table.

Possibly Related Posts:

• 恭喜發財 – Happy Year of the Water Dragon!
• Pure Pu’er
• Chado: The Way of Tea, at ArtXchange
• Come to the Northwest Tea Festival!
• ATB Blog Carnival: AdagioTeas’ “Roots Campaign.”

Normally, I would not brew pu’er tea in a glass teapot, but I wanted to see what this particular tea would look like as it broke apart and brewed. I couldn’t see any coffee-bean like thing in the pre-brewed cake on either side. But I also didn’t know whether or not a coffee bean would completely dissolve while surrounded by aging pu’er tea.

As the tea brewed it didn’t exhibit any unusual characteristics. The coffee bean did not jump out, or rise to the top, or become visible in any other way, so I figured it had absorbed into the tea. It also didn’t jump out at me as a flavor in the taste of the brewed tea, which tasted kind of a like a camel’s breath pu’er or another “forest floor” type pu’er. Those teas sometimes look like coffee, and they can have a flavor sort of like cheap diner coffee, which has a certain charm under the right circumstances. But there wasn’t anything that really struck me as coffee-like in this brew. And after thinking about how many coffee beans it takes to produce one strong cup of coffee, I realized that one lonely coffee bean wouldn’t stand much of a chance against the overpowering volume and flavor of the pu’er tea engulfing it.

I would hazard a guess that if you brewed some of this tea and then brought it to three non-specialized primarily coffee drinkers and three non-specialized primarily tea drinkers and had each of them taste it without telling them what it was, you’d probably get six different answers, scattered between tea and coffee.

The tea is interesting, but more so as a novelty than a tea one would want to drink a lot of. If you’re looking for a more traditional pu’er, try these 2003 Fang Cha Mini Cakes, also available from Teahouse Kuan Yin. They’re quite wonderful in taste and form. The coffee bean fang cha cakes themselves are available in the store, but not on the website. They are worth a try because they’re interesting and they are quite a novel product. I recommend drinking the tea in front of evangelical tea drinkers while they’re in the midst of a coffee abolitionist tirade, and telling them that what you like best about the tea is that it’s almost just like coffee (which it isn’t). Then run, or just hope they don’t have a heavy edition of the Cha Jing to chuck at your head.

While looking for more information about this coffee bean pu’er tea, I found another post about the very same tea on the Coffee Hero blog.

The coffee bean fang cha is made, or at least distributed, by this company, but I can’t read enough Chinese to figure out where the actual product page is for it.

Possibly Related Posts:

• 恭喜發財 – Happy Year of the Water Dragon!
• Pure Pu’er
• Chado: The Way of Tea, at ArtXchange
• Come to the Northwest Tea Festival!
• ATB Blog Carnival: AdagioTeas’ “Roots Campaign.”

Cafe Sua is made with a special stainless steel brewing container with tiny holes in the bottom that is placed over the top of a glass and then packed with very finely ground coffee, which is sometimes supplemented with chicory. Boiling water is then poured into the container to drip very slowly through the grounds into a 1/2 inch-or-so layer of sweetened condensed milk in the bottom of the glass. The coffee is generally stirred completely after it is finished brewing, and in hotter weather it is typically served iced and called Cafe Sua Da (Cà phê sữa đá).

As most of you know, or could at least infer by the country’s location, tea is also important in Vietnam. Typical teas range from the distinctive pungency of lotus-scented green tea to Tra Atiso, an infusion of artichoke leaves and petals. Most of the teas and non-tea infusions from Vietnam have a certain overall flavor profile, sort of green and sometimes bitter.

Interestingly, the traditional way that Cafe Sua is served in a Vietnamese-style cafe is alongside a cup or glass of tea. The tea is provided as a complimentary accompaniment to the coffee, and is continually refilled for as long as the patron is in the place, or until the coffee is done, which sometimes means the same thing. The experience of the two drinks together is quite pleasant. The tea has a sort of calming effect on the coffee, which is very strongly flavored, and strongly caffeinated. The tea also prevents the drying thirst that sometimes results from drinking strong coffee.

From what I’ve been able to determine through reading and through personal experience – not in Vietnam, but in what, from all appearances seems to be a transplanted typical Vietnamese style cafe in White Center, Washington, a tad south of Seattle – the tea served with the coffee is Vietnamese green tea. The last time I experienced this I paid particular attention to the tea. This was during the summer, so both the coffee and the tea were served iced. There were a couple of tea pitchers that were used to continually top up the customer’s glasses. The pitchers were kept full by adding concentrated tea from a metal pot and then adding water from a large cistern. Ice was added every so often also. The tea was lotus-scented green tea, and was made somewhat weakly.

The establishment I went to is one that I do not think non-Vietnamese speakers venture into very often. All of the other patrons were quite at home, smoking, playing video games and watching sports or the Vietnamese music television show on the widescreen LCD near the back as they sipped on their sweet, syrupy coffee and lightly refreshing tea. The place is quite dark, and quite unassuming from the outside. Stepping into it, I sensed that it was one of those rarely encountered reproductions of a slice of distant home culture. Research on Vietnamese cafe culture later confirmed this. Naturally, while out of my element in a place where little English is spoken, I was careful to be respectful and not act like a tourist. As a result, my photographic documentation was covert, although I would have loved to get a couple shots of the great neon above the bar and the way the slick stone bar glistened below it.

Read more about Cafe Sua Da and more about Vietnamese Cafe culture.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Chado: The Way of Tea, at ArtXchange
• Come to the Northwest Tea Festival!
• ATB Blog Carnival: AdagioTeas’ “Roots Campaign.”
• Phoenix rising
• The art of tea art: Infusions at SLAB Art

Despite the name, The Teacup‘s Snow Leopard Blend is not camellia sinensis flavored with snow leopards. It is not even picked or drunk by snow leopards. Part of it does come from growing regions that overlap with the big cat’s range, however. The blend is made up of Yunnan black tea, Assam black tea, and Nepalese first flush high mountain tea. It has quite an interesting pre-brewed scent, kind of sour, kind of sweet. The tea liquor is very unlike the types of teas that I usually drink, but I have been enjoying drinking it.

The tea’s relationship to the beautiful endangered big cats of the Himalayas is that 10% of each sale goes to The Snow Leopard Trust, an organization that promotes conservation of snow leopards and their habitats. This great idea germinated through the friendship of The Teacup’s owner with some of the members of the organization, which is locally connected to Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. The snow leopards are indisputably in need of the clearly envisioned and implemented assistance provided by the trust. From the Snow Leopard Trust’s site:

The Snow Leopard Trust strives to follow these principles in all its community-based conservation efforts and throughout this website you will read about the different projects that we are implementing with our community partners. While the projects differ in response to the local needs and conditions, the underlying principles of each of the programs remain the same. We constantly endeavor to improve our conservation projects to better meet the needs of cats and humans, and we are seeing wonderful results at our project sites where the livelihoods of families and communities have improved greatly and snow leopards are being protected.

Snow Leopard Blend is not on The Teacup’s website, but if you are local you can go to their store in Queen Anne to buy it. Or perhaps they might be willing to sell and send you some if you give them a call or email them. You’ll enjoy the tea, and you’ll be helping to save a group of very magnificent cats.

Photo credit: Helen Freeman, courtesy of Snow Leopard Trust. Photo location: Woodland Park Zoo; Seattle, WA USA

Possibly Related Posts:

• Chado: The Way of Tea, at ArtXchange
• Come to the Northwest Tea Festival!
• Phoenix rising
• The art of tea art: Infusions at SLAB Art
• Infusions: an exhibit of teaware by local Pacific Northwest artists