Cardew Club News

Craft Alliance’s biennial teapot exhibition is one of the institution’s most popular events. This year, the show includes more than 80 clay teapots made by more than 60 potters.

The pots were chosen by master potter Fong Choo, who invited 20 artists and chose the rest from submissions. “I selected the works based on four criteria: strong form, great craftsmanship, skill in handling the medium and attention to detail,” Choo said. Potters from all over the country are featured.

In addition to being more or less functional — some of the pots might frustrate users — all the pots were required to fit within a 10-by-10-inch box.

Today, people seem content to interact by way of increasingly impersonal technologies — now old-fashioned phone calls have given way to e-mails, text messages and instant message conversations. As much as most of us now depend on these technologies to make plans and keep in touch with distant friends and family, there’s an argument to be made that these interactions are a pale shadow of real, face-to-face conversations.

The perfect antidote to the complexities and barriers of modern life is an afternoon spent engaging in a ritual that is inefficient, un-modern and purely frivolous — the British tradition of high tea.

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.