Do's, don'ts: going out, staying in

An acquaintance writes for Chicagoist and pointed me to this link, a story about how restaurants ruin a simple cup of tea.

One can read this as ever-so justified invective against careless restauranteurs, but one can also take much from its list for our own personal prep. The egregious errors ticked off in the story are as important to be cognizant of at home.

The water temperature issue — burning the tea — is easily managed, though so few do. Green and whites benefit from cooler water. If you don't have an electric kettle that delivers just the right temp, a simple thermometer can set your water straight. I fell in love with a coffee shop on campus not only because they have pretty good tea and selection but because during an early visit one of the baristas asked if I'd like her to put an ice cube in the cup over the tea to cool the water from the instant-boil tap. Not a perfect solution, bu better than nothing — and it showed knowledge and care.

Also, I've become something of an obnoxious evangelist against tea balls and novelty tea steepers. I know, I've posted pics of more than a few of the latter, admiring their design. But the things are really dreadful for tea. If someone finally breaks away from bags only to cram loose-leaf tea into a cramped mesh ball, they don't notice that much difference in taste. Let the tea be. Dream About Tea, a superb shop listed at the end of the story, serves several teas naked in the cup — no bag, no ball, no pouch, just tea leaves directly in the cup. Because good tea sinks.

Celebrating (and rating) the stovetop kettle

I've been using an electric kettle so long now that I'd forgotten some of the actual joy to be had from a stovetop kettle. I adore my plug-in boiler, with its precise temperature settings. But I do miss the whistle of the stovetopper, and the warmth of the flame. Then again, I'm not even sure I remember where my stovetop kettle is, come to think of it ...

A UK blogger named Mike, however, is celebrating all stovetop tea things on a new blog, Stove Top Kettles. He's got 15 models reviewed and rated thus far, and one of his top 5 is an espresso maker.

The other thing I forget about stovetop kettles: their beauty as art objects. Just paging through a gathering of kettles like this blog is a reminder of the captivating design that goes into creating them — certainly much more than the electrics. Like this beauty ...

Drinking the days away

You've seen this beautiful design, I hope. It's a calendar — and each "page" pulled is actually a square of compressed tea you can drop right into your morning cup.



Knowing me, I'd cut out the middle man and slip them right onto my tongue, like a Listerine strip.

Hey, you, get offa my cloud

Heaven, n'est-ce pas?

(via design-dautore)

Shaken, not steeped

If you've read this blog for very long, you know I'm as much of a lush as I am a tea-totaler. Thus, I adore this nifty design.

Looks like a tea pot, no? But it's actually a cocktail shaker.

Try as I might, I can't find a video of this thing in action. I'm imagining the genius of its function, in addition to its form, is the handle — something underutilized in cocktail shaker design and crucial when you're trying to get your martini as cold as Valley Forge.

The design — Swedish, storied, dating to the 1920s or ’30s — is hard to come by. You'd have to really love your designs, cocktails or tea to purchase one in the States, though, given that they run more than $400 a piece. Looking and admiring is free.

Labor, rest, repeat

A long work day, and it was only late morning. I stretched (a rare moment when I remembered to do so), I snapped and cracked my old bones, I took my tea and stared out the window at the sprinkling rain.

Tea and its dual uses: it revs me up for work, hones my focus, then it steps me down from the work, relaxing, soothing. Each day is a yin-yang cycle of work and retreat, of leisure and business. The trick is to master the wavelength — to bring the cycle of rest and work into a nice, even hum, with the two poles evenly spaced, or at least as spaced as they should be, as the work or the rest calls for. The rest benefits from the work, the accomplishment, the contrast. The work benefits from the stretch, the window, the moment.

Curiously, just recently I ran across this passage in an old journal, part of an entry from Christmas Eve 2004 describing one of my old staring spots:

Just took a tea break. When I need a mid-afternoon breather, I like to take my tall tea mug to a landing on the building's east stairwell. What was once the main entrance, on Main Street, features seven stories of steps with a wide, gentle rise curling around a cavern of empty space all the way up. Just outside the fifth floor, outside the receptionist area, there's a 12- or 14-foot window overlooking Main Street. I like to lean on the bannister and stare at the city. The 320 Boston building looms to the left, with its unpredictable design and occasional arches. I'd love to find the access to that patio up there. The whole building looks like Philadelphia Hall, but on top its jutting corners and Tetris-like construction look positively Roman. The owner of the Indian art gallery across the street is invariably standing on the sidewalk, smoking. The construction crews are laboring even today to get the rest of Main Street reopened to traffic after a couple of decades as a pedestrian mall. The vantage point on the buildings to the southeast couldn't be better composed. I should take pictures. The work world that goes on outside my head. Important to remember.

A cup of letters

I succumbed to buying a tea shirt this time last year, and a friend just pointed me toward another nifty design:



It's available at RedBubble one shirts or hoddies (as well as stickers!). Race ya.

The tipping point for a teacup

Dig this nifty design — a tipping tea cup, in which you can brew the tea and separate the leaves within the same vessel (thus eliminating balls, bags and other infusers):



Available here, for $20.

It's the same basic idea behind my favorite teapot, the "castle cairn" tilting style.

Oprah's tea house is not a pee house

Chicago has been more Oprah-obsessed this week than usual. The daytime talk queen taped her final show yesterday at the United Center arena, featuring a motley cast of guests — Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Jerry Seinfeld, Josh Groban, Patti Labelle, Madonna, John Legend, Maria Shriver and more. The Sun-Times reported the whole affair, and tweeted it, even the star-studded after-party.

For our purposes here, one of Oprah's proteges, Nate Berkus, interviewed Ms. Winfrey for an episode of his own home-life-whatever show earlier this month. He did so at Oprah's palatial California estate, which includes an opulent tea house.

In this video segment inside the tea house, Oprah explains her design input for the space. "I wanted it to feel intimate," she says, adding, "like a hug." She also points out that there's no restroom — perhaps a glaring omission for a place where one serves a diuretic. They talk a lot about this, in fact ...

Creative tea mug designs

Following up yesterday's Mr. T pot, this link goes to a list of 50 unique coffee and tea mug designs.

Some of them are suspect to me, but some are pretty cool. I love plucky design that's also useful, like this mug that has a strategic slot to store whatever cookies/biscuits you're going to dunk ...

Earth Day: Grab your travel mug for tea on the go

It's Earth Day, that quaint 24-hour period given over to the planet and the marketers who love it. For the tea world, it's a good reminder to ditch the plastic, styrofoam, even paper cups from your favorite to-go steeping shop. In my experience, most places have no problem filling up your travel mug.

Today, in fact, Starbucks will do it for free! Bring in your earth-conscious, reusable travel mug and get a free tea (from Tazo) or coffee.

I have two travel mugs I like for different reasons. One is blue, has a good-grip rubbery handle and is remarkably well-insulated; sometimes I've filled it with chai, gone for a walk, and returned home before the tea was cool enough to drink without boiling my tongue. The other is pink, has no handle and is just plain cute.

Of course, these are just insulated mugs that could contain anything; they're not specifically built for tea. There are, however, a lot of good travel mugs now especially designed with tea in mind. I've tried a few. Planetary Design makes a nifty French press mug, which is handy and fashionable — but a wee bit leaky on the go (great for an office desk, though). Bodum also makes a line of travel presses.

A new one I've just been trying out is the Libre tea glass, a portable insulated glass (glass inside, plastic outside, cool to carry) with a filter on top for brewing loose-leaf tea. You can actually brew two ways — with tea directly in the glass using the filter to screen the leaves as you drink, or with tea in the filter for brewing. I was a moron, not sure if it was designed for one application only, until I saw this video ...



Good Housekeeping has this good comparison of 27 different tea/coffee travel mugs. That first one, the Thermos tea tumbler, is similar to the Libre glass without, of course, the glass and thus no doubt a tad more rugged out and about.

Pricey storage tins at least look swell

I just rearranged my tea cabinet, which involved buying some new canisters and storage containers (more to come). I did not, however, splurge on any of these, though I show off this photo just because I like looking at great design. This is a Soss Box. These "food-grade, hermetically-sealed containers feature magnetic, stackable modular sections — including an optional screen section for particulate collection — solid aluminum construction, and stainless steel fasteners." They fit in your hand, and they cost $200 (without screen) to $250 (with screen).

All in all, it's just another (teacup) in the wall

More cool tea design — Teacup Tiles. Nice purely as accents but also functional. Store teaware in the cup, hang keys or freshly cut herbs off the hook.

[ via Teaspoons and Petals ]

Nifty tea mug for tea bag users

I love good tea design, and the folks at Yanko rarely disappoint. Dig this handy mug — with a notch for the tea bag string (keeps the tag from slipping into the tea) plus a hollow, shallow bottom under the mug and over the saucer (thus the name, the Tea Coffin) for stashing the bag once the tea has brewed ...



Check out the whole page of photos, which includes a few shots of a nifty kettle/carafe. Available in December.

Teapots hanging in the family tree

My mother recently moved and, as aging mothers do, pared down her belongings. My father, before he died, lived in constant preparation for this event. Closets were always being cleaned (and then refilled), piles always being made. Every visit home would end with, "Do you want to take that ____?" or "Come on out in the garage, there's some stuff you should go through before it gets hauled off." He'd be impressed by Mom's relatively Buddhist trimming down of material possessions.

Part of that process, you may have experienced, involves making sure the stuff with family history — and stories attached — is passed out among the children. I'm eager to share my wares: She handed off two beautiful tea sets from her side of the clan. There's this set, from which I'm drinking keemun right now as I write ...



I know nothing about china, patterns or the intricate histories thereof. Nor does my mother, who remembers very little about the set, which belonged to my great-grandmother. "I don't even remember anyone using it," she says. Always a sucker for early 20th-century design, I love the modern lines and adult baby-blue of this china. I have been able to confirm that it's made by the Noritake company in Japan, manufactured between 1914 and 1921. The cup (there's just the one) is so light and thin I feared it would crumble in my hand as I cleaned it. Great to drink from, though. Here's to you, great-granmamma, wherever you are.

The other treasure is this silver service ...



This was grandmother's. By contrast, this was "used all the time." Mom says: "Mother always was having her little lady friends over. She entertained a lot, and poured tea with this." It's a splendid silver pot — I'm beginning to understand why wealthy Brits insist silver is the best vessel for tea — with a sugar bowl and creamer. Very well-to-do, ahem.

Another random bit of family history came to me this week from my dad's sister: "You may not know this bit of family trivia, but your great grandmother, when she came to America as John's wife, was unable to bring much with her. She did however bring a tea pot and teaspoons and some linen napkins. I'm sure she was horrified when she saw the Nebraska home where she was supposed to live and raise a family. Probably having things from England helped her to adjust."

Hey, I'm just glad to know I'm descended from people who, when evaluating which material goods really matter, include the teapot.

Europe: Sir Robert's Blend

I bought a lot of tea in Europe. Had to lug a separate carry-on on the plane home full of tea and teaware. The shincha from Copenhagen, the Goalpara from Amsterdam — my tea cabinet overfloweth. But the first tea I will be reordering, because I'm going through it like mad, is one I chanced upon in, of all places, Helsinki, Finland.

Robert's Coffee is a shop that started in Helsinki in 1987; now it's a chain across Scandinavia. (Sound familiar? The logo's even hunter green.) On our beautiful afternoon in Helsinki — possibly our favorite stop on this trip — we wandered into a shop just off the city's Esplanade boulevard. They offer a fine range of teas from around the world, and I bought a signature product, the Sir Robert's Blend. It's a mix of Chinese and Indian teas, with a heavy dose of Keemun. If you've read the blog this far, you know I'm a sucker for Keemun. This blend, with the Keemun spiciness and some other, rounder flavors — it's fantabulous. My favorite afternoon tea at present.

Coffee and teaware on display at the Design Museum in Helsinki.

Europe: Lomonosov poreclain

Like I wasn't going to buy one. As our ship nestled the dock in St. Petersburg a couple of weeks ago, I succumbed to a lifelong urge to buy a Lomonosov teapot. If it was good for Peter the Great, by czar, it's good enough for tea cabinet.

Among Peter's many projects designed to lift Russia out of the Middle Ages and make it a European country was his desire to create original Russian porcelain. In 1744, his daughter, Queen Yelizaveta, realized that dream by establishing the Imperial Porcelain Factory "to serve the cause of national industry and art." The Russian china produced was — and remains — very high quality.

This cobalt net design with hand-painted gold leaf is their trademark pattern. I'm thrilled to add this pot and some cups to my stash, and I've already christened it with some Kusmi Russian Morning ...

London: Historic teaware is everywhere

Sunday in London: rainy, cold, blustery. Time to hit the museum! And museums in London are gloriously free. I opted for the Victoria & Albert Museum, for two reasons. First, they have some gowns by Norman Hartnell in their collection, and he's on my family tree (alas, none of them are on display currently). Second, they just opened a Grace Kelly fashion exhibit (alas, it was already sold out for the day when I arrived). So I wound up roaming the collection and snapping photos of all the teaware — in the British collection, in the Asian collection, many continents and many eras.

This, I discovered, was the third reason I enjoyed the V&A. They focus less on Art and more on art. The collections are filled with handiwork, everyday stuff rather than fine art — I'll stop short of saying "crafts." Thus, they have a lot of tea items in house.

Forgive my crap photo skills, but here's a look:

In the Asia gallery, straddling the China and Japan rooms, there are two shelves in a case along one wall dedicated to teaware. Instead of snapping a couple of dozen photos, I simply passed my video camera along the cards and then the shelves of pots, cups and other artifacts. Sorry for the soft focus on the cards, but here they are ...

I loved both of these pots because of the mixed media, which I'm not sure I've seen before. The one on the left is a classic British silver design with a wicker handle. The one on the right, circa late 1600s, is Yixing clay with a silver spout and a wicker handle.

This beautiful silver tea pot was made in western India around 1880 by (deep breath) Oomersi Mawji, the court silversmith to the ruler of Kutch, Maharao Shri Mirza Raja Sawai Khengarji Bahadurno.

Dig the colorful detail on this pot in front, showing a Cantonese viceroy from 1745.

A black bowl and stand with intricate dragon motif from 19th century Japan (left), and a stoneware tea pot with a crackled cream glaze and a phoenix vs. dragon design made in Kyoto, early 1800s.

Finally, for a different take on teaware history, here's video of Stephen Twinings — during an interview with him at the Twinings HQ in The Strand — talking briefly about the background of the antique tea box collection on display there:



More to come on the chat at Twinings ...

I think we're gonna need a bigger cup ...

Two things I love: tea and great design. Argentina designer Pablo Matteoda won a prize for this design, the Sharky tea infuser — a tea basket underneath a floating dorsal fin. Ingenious.



Writes Matteoda: "INFUSION means to extract certain properties from an soluble ingredient such as tea leaves, herbs or fruit by soaking in liquid (water) until it gets saturated. So we can say that a infuser is the in charged of make this happen. This is a ludic point of view about the color given off from the phenomenon, which makes more interesting the waiting of the whole process."

He claims it will be manufactured soon and available for sale here.

Spring shopping: Tea things I am coveting

Cooking Light magazine has a fairly new feature near the front called "The Editor's Dozen," spotlighting 12 nifty items, books, ingredients, what have you that have impressed the staff or at least piqued their curiosity. This month's edition just happens to be loaded with several really cool, tea-related things ...

Like beautiful graphic tea towels from Studio Patro (check out the web site, great design, cool stuff) ...



The prints include bold leaves, variations on the letter T, peace symbols, the word "wanderlust" and more. Gimme, gimme!

I'm also in love with this Martha Stewart dinnerware, Hudson and Classic Band mix-and-match available at Macy's, including nicely weighted mugs and saucers ...



(Word of warning: Martha has recalled some of her teapots.)

And finally, here's my pick from the cool line of lacquer serving trays designed by Pacific Connections ...



They have a few dozen designs, including a bolder Mondrian pattern, but I like the softer pastels of this urban flair.

The magazine feature also included some artfully photographed matcha tea powder, hawking one of the $69 five-piece sets from matchasource.com (great starter kit or gift) ...