Cardew Club News » 2008 » April

A CAT-LOVING collector has turned her home into the purr-fect place for a mad catter’s tea party.

Colchester mum Jane McCausland has spent 20 years building a treasure trove of more than 150 teapots, all in the shape of cats!

She openly confesses many of the kitsch kitties that line her living room walls look “disgusting”.

But she is so determined to make sure her collection is the cat’s whiskers that she can’t resist pouring money into it, leaving husband Greg to stew as their home becomes a feline shrine.

Since time immemorial, tea drinking has been a common practice for a majority of people in the world.

In fact, tea has been regarded as the world’s most consumed beverage, next to water.

But the preference of a good tea, whether it be green, black, yellow, white, red, oolong, or whatever color or flavor it is, still depends on the processing of a tea bush called Camellia sinensis, which includes oxidation, heating, drying, and infusion of other herbs, flowers, spices, and fruits.

Tea is only comparable to wine when human culture celebrates the wealth of nature. Tea is a remarkable example of the soil’s generosity and diversity. It has been celebrated for 2,000 years, as a healthy beverage and a symbol of humanity.

This extract from a poem by Lu Tong (790-835), a Chinese poet known as a “tea lover,” celebrates the pleasure brought on by successive tea infusions prepared in a Yixing teapot:

The first bowl sleekly moistened my throat and lips;

The second banished all my loneliness;

The teaspoon could become a thing of the past after the invention of a mug that can stir liquid by itself.

All a drinker has to do to work the clever cup is gently swirl it.

This sets in motion a ceramic ball positioned at the bottom of the mug that stirs the contents.

The device was invented by two French designers, who recently displayed it at the London Design Festival.

Florian Dussopt, 23, said: “The cup aims at introducing a new way of drinking tea or another warm drink without using a spoon.

TURN a small zisha teapot in your hand, admire its design, its deep purple color, exquisite carving and seal. Strike it and hear a tiny metallic ping. Smell the embedded fragrance of green tea, writes Weng Shihui.

Little brown teapots abound in China, but look closely: Many are works of art that are famed for their rich and varied earthen tones, intricate craftsmanship and their ability to brew marvelous tea.

By now we have all heard about the amazing health benefits of chinese green tea. Long used medicinally in China, it has become increasingly popular around the world. Is there a difference between tea grown in China, and tea from other places? What are the origins of tea, and how did it become so popular?

How Tea Begin

Tea is thought to have originated in China at least 2,000 years ago. Because of the time that has passed since then, mystery surrounds the actual beginning of tea-drinking.

Coffee isn’t the only caffeinated beverage to get the gourmet makeover. How to properly tackle tea.

Long before shorts, talls, pumpkin lattes, and frothy half-caf frappuccinos, America was a nation of tea totallers.

Colonists drank black tea with abandon, renouncing it only when Britain’s unjust taxes inspired the Founding Fathers to dump their tea into the ocean. Tea didn’t completely disappear, but it was eclipsed by another caffeinated beverage. “Coffee was closer and cheaper in the 1800s,” says Mark Pendergrast, author of Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World. Unlike tea leaves, beans could be obtained from the ­Caribbean or from Latin America.