Jinxed

I am having a teaware run of death at the moment. Over the last four months or so I have

Broken two glass teapot lids (the second one was my spare, my glass teapot is now unusable)
Shattered a gaiwan lid (luckily I have a spare)
Broken the handle on my beautiful Royal Doulton cup (mended)
Shattered the lid of my tokoname teapot (not fixable, teapot now can't be used)
Smashed the handle of my small zero japan teapot (well, the cat knocked it off the bench; can't be fixed)
Smashed to smithereens a lovely green mug that was a gift from my husband.

The green mug died last night. I went to bed in tears. I have not allowed myself any tea so far today in case I break something else...

Tea in Art

Here are some beautiful tea-themed artworks, photos and images I've spotted round and about... enjoy!

Sailing in a tea cup by Pragya K (thanks Jess for introducing me to Pragya's work!)

This one is a free printable card - thanks Kellie!

A beautiful tea kettle image from Tea for Joy

Stunning tea cups - found on We Heart It.

And I love the funky colours in this one (also from We Heart It).

Do you name your teapots?

Some people do! Brett at the Black Dragon Tea Bar has a whole League of Pots... with superpowers... wouldn't want to mess with any of these guys or gals. I rather like 'Chip' myself -

- his brewing specialty is Assam. Brett rescued him from a thrift store... I'm sure they are both glad about that!

Some little yellow teapots have a whole lot of personality all of their own, and even conduct interviews with other personable teawares.

To be honest it never really occurred to me to name my teapots. Perhaps I should? I wonder if they feel unloved, to go unnamed.

Everything Old is New Again

Well, kind of!

I had a very successful op-shopping trip last week and came home with some excellent booty, including this wonderful retro tea cosy:

And this gorgeous teapot - English Staffordshire ware, although I don't know how old it is:

As you can see it's rather crazed and the crazing is a bit stained - so I'm going to have a go at cleaning it (carefully). Also some of the gilt is a bit worn on the handle, but there's nothing else wrong with it - it pours beautifully with nary a dribble in sight and it is a good size (holds about a litre, which is comfortably between my 2-cup pots and my 6-8 cup pot).

I also had the good fortune to be the recipient of a large collection of Noritake cups, saucers and plates, courtesy of a friend whose parents didn't want them any more, and who had no use for them himself. There are about ten demitasse cups and saucers, three trio sets of full size cups and a few extra plates - all in very good condition despite being very old (I believe they originally belonged to my friend's great-grandparents).

I don't know much about researching china patterns - does anyone have any handy tips? I would love to know the name of the Noritake pattern; it's not like any Noritake I've seen before!

Wishlist Wednesday - Vintage Teapots

I am totally craving a new teapot and it must be vintage. Want want want. These are a few of my current favourites from Etsy:

Cute handpainted vintage teapot from Sassy Spaces - love the unusual shape!

Flower power Sadler teapot from Violets and Grace - so cheery!

Blue ceramic teapot from merchant of kismet - gorgeous colour and pretty pattern.

And this one is my current absolute favourite - am seriously considering shelling out for the postage on this one!

Retro teapot from third coast vintage - how do I love thee; let me count the ways - perfectly cute shape, awesome flowers, nifty lid, great size!

And finally, this one:

Atomic eggplant tea kettle  from DooDah Factory - ok, not technically a teapot but full of WIN! It looks like it is ready to take off on an intergalactic journey - for which of course you would need plenty of tea.

Spare Teacups?

No problem! Check out the nifty things you can do with mismatched, spare teacups...

Jess made a teacup succulent garden - doesn't it look beyond terrific, like something from a magazine shoot!

And Deb shares tutorials on how to make mini cake stands out of old plates and other crockery, including teacups - great for cupcakes or small things.

I would love to do either or both of these activities, and they seem pretty well within my creative abilities, but if you are totally talented and capable of something really challenging, then take some inspiration from this 'storm in a teacup' which I spotted on Tea for Joy:

Wishlist Wednesday - A Question of Necessity

It's been a while since I did a Wednesday Wishlist!

My sister maintains that a milk jug is an unnecessary piece of tea accoutrement. I suppose, from a certain point of view (a certain point of view??), and depending on the kind of tea you drink, she may be right. However we should not let that stop us from celebrating the dubiously necessary in all shapes and forms...

I have a little Bison milk bottle (scroll down on the Bison page to spot them) in a lovely sagey grey-green... which colour would you choose? I'd quite like a cherry red one as well.

Love the simplicity of this creamer and sugar bowl set - the little birdie detail is adorable!

How about a teabag rest... well if you're not into teabags then like me you would use it for your tea strainer...

... wouldn't mind this tea strainer myself actually!

And some coasters... I would LOVE to have this set:

So much fun stuff to choose from... luckily I'm rotten, stinking, stony, stinking broke at present.

The Happiness of a New Teapot

This is my new pride and joy, a Tokoname teapot that I purchased at Taka Tea in the Strand Arcade in Sydney last weekend. I fell in love with the design of maple leaves (there was also a very nice cherry blossom one) and the fact that it has a built in mesh that stretches almost all the way round the inside of the pot - much better than an infuser basket, but I don't have to use my strainer! It pours like a dream - I wasn't sure how easy I would find using the sideways handle, but it's not difficult at all. It will, obviously, be dedicated solely to Japanese green teas.

 (According to O-cha.com, Tokoname is one of the 9 ancient kilns of Japan, and here you can see step by step photos of teapots being made by the throwing method or the slip casting method - how cool!)

The lovely people at Taka Tea were very happy to spend time talking with me about their teas and teapots (you can check out their online shop here). They also kindly brewed up a small pot of gyokuro for me to sample, which was deliciously light and fresh. I came away with a packet of first flush yabukita* which I haven't yet opened; I'll work my way through a few other things first, but I'm looking forward to it.


*this appears to be a clonal variety of tea bush widely grown in Japan, capable of adapting well to wherever it is planted. Handy!

Wishlist Wednesday - Glass Tea Cups

Here are some gorgeous glass teacups for you to enjoy... so delicate, and perfect for showing off the colour of the infused tea!

 

Blue glass vintage teacup from Noodle.

Glass teacup and saucer from Jing Tea.

Glass gaiwan from SanTion House of Tea.

 

Cups and saucers from Juniper Lodge.

And my personal favourite today:

Etched glass tea cup and saucer from Dishes' Shop.

Work in Progress

So if there's one thing that makes a nice cup of tea even nicer, it's having a beautiful canister to store your precious tea leaves in.

I'm experimenting with the idea of producing my own line of one-of-a-kind decorative tea canisters... am waiting on some samples to be delivered hopefully next week so I can work out what shape and size is best before I invest in a whole carton of the things... and have been amusing myself over the last 24 hours by decorating some of my own plain tins. What do you think?

I stamped the paper for this one with a pretty flower stamped made by Riyo from Talk to the Sun.

The bottom canister in the photo above is decorated with a piece of paper from a nifty vintage paper pack that my sister gave me for Christmas, and the bird card in the next photo is from the same pack.


Comments and feedback welcome!

Wishlist Wednesday - Tea 'n Textiles

Quite a few of the blogs I follow do a 'wishlist Wednesday' feature each week, so I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon. This is the first of my tea-themed (naturally) wishlists... beautiful textile products to accompany your cup of tea!

Fancy a Brew Tea Towel in Sky by Mr PS

Well, of course I would... but I might need to schedule it so I don't forget:

Tea Time Diary Organiser by Sasha Sews

Must keep the pot warm...

Red Floral Tea Cosy by Tractor Girl

... and the mug of course!

Chai Tea Organic Knitted Mug Cosy by Knit Storm

And some beautiful words to contemplate while I'm sipping (much too beautiful to actually use this tea towel for drying dishes!):

Tea - by Carol Ann Duffy Tea Towel by Kitchen Sink Dramas

A New Tea Set for a (soon-to-be) New Arrival...

As I was stumbling up to bed following the baby shower my friends threw for me and my husband last weekend (yes... we scrapbooked til midnight to produce the most awesome baby book EVER. Crazy times) I thought I caught sight of something on the mantelpiece in the baby's room... but it was dark, and I was very tired, and so I didn't investigate any further.

Later the next morning though, I discovered that the mystery shape that I had half-discerned the night before was in fact this beautiful new tea set:


... complete with three cups: two big ones and one little one!

I asked my slightly bleary husband if he knew anything about it; he didn't, but suggested that this thoughtful gift was probably due to a visit from the Teapot Elves (entirely plausible, I thought). As it shortly turned out, the Teapot Elf in question was my sister. What an awesome present... I can't wait to share it with Little X at an appropriate time after his or her arrival...

The next question is, of course, what tea shall I pack in my hospital bag to celebrate said arrival? It must be robust enough to withstand hospital water and temperature (which I am prepared to accept may be sub-optimal) yet special enough to be celebratory. I shall have to devote more thought to this pressing issue over the next few weeks. Suggestions welcome!

Teacup Candles by Twilight Spells

These gorgeous little teacup candles arrived on my doorstep the other week - my housewarming present to myself (or at least that's my excuse anyway):

I found them browsing on Etsy through the 'shop local' feature, where I was looking at recently listed items from sellers in Melbourne and Sydney. There were so many beautiful designs to choose from, but I fell in love with these, plus I figured they would go very nicely with our dinner set. They've been gracing the dining table on most nights since they arrived.

They're made from upcycled vintage teacups collected by the lovely Ruth at Twilight Spells in Sydney and are filled with clean-burning soy wax. Check out the others in her shop - they are too pretty for words, and you can choose your own fragrance for the wax (or leave them unscented). I decided on honeydew melon for these ones, largely (I confess) because the cups themselves were so green; they smell delicious, sweet and fruity without being overpowering.

I generally prefer to drink out of my vintage teacups (of which I have a slowly increasing collection - another post about that to follow shortly), but this is such a terrific idea I wish I'd thought of it first... Thanks Ruth, I will be checking in at your shop regularly!

Pride, Prejudice, Tea

My husband and I managed to watch our way through the entirety of the BBC Pride and Prejudice mini-series (1995) last week. Amazingly, neither of us saw it when it was on TV (though I recall my friends and sister being very keen on it), and the last time I read P&P was so many years ago that I couldn’t remember the plot in any detail. Consequently each episode saw us agog to know what happened next.

And not only agog about the unfolding story either – well, at least not in my case. While I readily admit to swooning over Mr Darcy by the end (sigh!!), I also became – quite naturally, I would argue - rather obsessed with checking out the teawares that featured in different scenes. So many gorgeous patterns – and honestly, just as swoon-worthy as Mr Darcy from my perspective (although I am willing to recognise that not everyone may share this point of view).

Where else to start my search but with the omniscient Google – but even I was surprised how quickly a search for ‘china pattern bbc pride and prejudice’ returned me exactly the results I was looking for. Check out this article about the china pattern used at Longbourn, and this one about the ones at Netherfield and elsewhere – both from the highly informative Jane Austen’s World blog.

How I would love to have a single teacup – an entire set would definitely be too much to hope for – in the Cornelia Green pattern by Mottahedeh as used at Longbourn! Well, perhaps I can always keep an eye on eBay.

But what kind of tea would Jane Austen – and her characters – be drinking? That early in the 19th century it would almost certainly have been China tea – tea gardens did not really get underway in Assam, India, until after 1825, so The Story of Tea informs me. During Austen’s period, tea was generally drunk after dinner (which was usually served around 3 or 4 pm), and not as ‘afternoon tea’ – that only became popular a little later in the 1800s.

There is a great deal of helpful background on daily life in England during the 19th century (from servants, to ‘the season’, to food, clothing and social calls) in the entertaining book by Daniel Pool, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, which I recently acquired from the library. Alas, it contains nowhere near as much detail as I would like about tea; I shall have to explore its extensive bibliography to find out more. Indeed, I am not sure how I shall resist reference works with such arresting titles as this: Movable Feasts: A reconnaissance of the origins and consequences of fluctuations in meal-times, with special attention to the introduction of luncheon and afternoon tea, by Arnold Palmer, 1952. Looks like the kind of thing I could really snuggle up with – so long as I also had a cup of tea, of course.

Brown Betty Teapots

The history of teawares is fascinating – it has been affected by, and indeed itself affected, so many different converging cultural, economic, physical and social aspects of its consumers’ lives. This was brought home to me recently by a couple of posts by Gongfu Girl, on her own blog and on The Taste of English Tea blog, about Brown Betty teapots. I didn’t realise that the name referred to such a specific type of teapot, made with a particular type of clay and glaze.

I don’t own a Brown Betty – though I do have a very lovely large pot in a similar shape made by London Pottery Co. – but I would be most interested to acquire the genuine article (and having read the above-mentioned posts, I shall be careful to make sure that it is genuine). I have seen teapots that look very much like Brown Bettys in the enormous collection gracing the high shelves at Miss Marple’s Tea Room in Sassafras – alas, they’re used for display only, and not serving tea, so I don’t know if they’re the real thing. (I will mention in passing that it is my ambition to one day own as many teapots as there are at Miss Marple’s, but it may take me some time to reach that point).

The other thing that Brown Betty teapots make me think of is a book of short stories called ‘The Dribblesome Teapots’ by Norman Hunter, which I read and loved many years ago as a child. I don’t remember the plot terribly clearly, but it revolved around the difficulty of pouring the King and Queen’s tea without it dribbling all over the place (a major royal disaster, indeed, as anyone might agree) and I have a feeling that the only teapot capable of doing the job was the trusty old Brown Betty. I may be misremembering though, and will have to try and find myself a copy of the book to be sure.

New toys!

My o-so-thoughtful husband is becoming increasingly responsible for the increasing number of teapots that I posses. I think – count ‘em – I think I have seven now: glass; orange (that one’s at work); green Beehouse; Yixing; Chinesey looking one with brown leaves and red berries; blue Crown Lynn; and – most recently - this beautiful Japanese one with blue leaves, and its two matching cups, that T gave me for Valentines Day.

I’ve used this one a few times already for (what else?) Japanese sencha (the organic one from from T2) and it’s a stunner; it pours perfectly and the mesh infuser inside is a decent size - not to mention that its rim is made from plastic, so I don't burn my fingers when I'm removing it from the pot! I wouldn’t want to brew a tea whose leaves end up enormous with this (or any other) infuser, but for the fine-cut leaves of sencha it works beautifully. It's hard to see under the pattern, but the side of the pot is actually very slightly ridged, so it has a lovely textural feel to it as well. The pale yellow-green of the infusion goes well against the pale greeny-grey of the cups’ interior.

Isn’t it funny how greeny-grey can be so charming in ceramic wares, and yet so off-putting in other circumstances, like food, for example? Something to ponder, at any rate.

I also received this dinky little Japanese gaiwan-style… well, gaiwan… I suppose, for want of a better word. It doesn’t have a saucer like a traditional Chinese gaiwan and is not quite the same shape. I have been googling and googling but am unable to determine what it might properly be called. But I’ve been using it in a similar type of way to a gaiwan to brew small quantities of tea for repeat infusions. It’s quite easy to hold, although I will admit to using two hands, one for the bowl and one for the lid (I believe proper tea masters can manipulate a gaiwan with only one hand?). I just adore the flowers pattern on the side and the lid, it cheers me up just to look at it! 

It’s pictured here in close up with some of the T2 oolong that my husband also gave me, for Christmas. Anyone who can tell me what it's called, I'd be most grateful.

I shall be posting about both these T2 teas at another time, but soon!

Oh, and I realised that I forgot to post a picture of the Yixing pot which I bought from Zensation the other week. I used it for the first time today (felt a little intimidated by the whole Yixing/gong fu thing, but I got over it!). Isn't it a beauty? And I just adore the little goldfish on the cup!

Photos!

Here at last are some pretty photos of some of my teawares; I had to take them more or less all in the same spot as we only have one really well-lit sunny spot near a window in the house, but I think they turned out fairly well.

My Beehouse teapot, that I use every day (usually more than once!)

A collection of my prettier canisters and tins that I keep my tea in

My enormous (6+ cups, depending on the size of the cups) London Pottery Farmhouse teapot, with the tea cosy that I bought from Tea Leaves in Sassafras (so pretty)

And last but not least, a picture of the Earl Grey prunes that I made the other day, which are currently steeping in the fridge and will be ready to go in another couple of weeks!