The
varieties of tea, the second drink in the world after water, are known with the
names of their different colours. Despite the common believe, they do not come
from different plants, but all, except for the red tea, from the same tea plant,
Camellia sinensis. The colours and
properties of each kind are due to the preparation processes applied to the
leaves after the harvesting, mostly oxidation, roasting, and
fermentation processes, brought to the end or not, thus giving life to black, yellow, white, green and blue-green tea.
For the fans
of technologies and interconnections between productive cycles, it is
interesting to notice how the history of tea is strongly interlaced with that
of pottery, and how it conditioned not only the production of
different shapes, but also determined some technological choices. Between the 6th
and the 10th centuries for examples, the production of tea in China
had a strong impact on ceramic: more and more furnaces produced severe objects made
of grès, the dark one, in particular, constituted the cups called temmoku, considered the most suitable to
create a contrast with the clear foam of the powdered tea that was battered mixed
with boiling water. The discovery, around 1000 AD of kaolin mines in the
southern China, allowed the development of porcelain production at the big
scale. It was for tea users that the celadon and white and blue porcelain cups were
elaborated, and also the teapots, after the imperial decree of 1391 which stated
that tea had to be consumed in form of infusion. The emperor Kangxi
(1662-1722), following the example of the enamels on copper coming from France,
had them reproduced on porcelain, obtaining vivid objects with strong
colour contrasts and shiny enamels. The colloidal gold (also known as Cassius purple) came also from Europe,
and gave life to rose enamels, well harmonized with the pale white of
porcelains. Thus, China became a great exporter, not only of tea starting from 1606,
but also of porcelain, from the 18th century imitated and produced
by the European manufactures of Delft, Rouen, Meissen and Sèvres.
This
wonderful story is recounted in the exhibition “Le thé. Histoire d’une boisson
millénaire” open until the 7th of January 2013 at the Asiatic arts
museum “Musée Guimet” in Paris. The narration of the history of tea is materialized in the exposition of documents, books and above all objects connected
to its preparation and tasting.
It is a
very interesting exhibition also from the museological point of view: it is a
“multi-sensorial” route in which the guest is invited to feel the scent of the
different qualities of tea, touch the textures and even taste
them…Unfortunately, they are already out of stock!
To learn more:
* JP Desroches, Le Thé - Histoires d'une boisson millénaire, 2012.
* S Pierson, The Movement of Chinese Ceramics: Appropriation in Global History, Journal of World History, Volume 23, Number 1, pp. 9-39, 2012.
To learn more “Archaeometrically speaking...”
* JM Miao, CL Lv, H Li, TM Chen, Non-destructive analysis of ‘original’ Song Dynasty Guan Wares and later imitations from the Palace Museum collections, Beijing, Archaeometry, 54, 6 (2012) 955–973.
* MS Tite, IC Freeston, N Wood, An investigation into the relationship between the raw materials used in the production of Chinese porcelain and stoneware bodies and the resulting microstructures, Archaeometry 54, 1 (2012) 37–55.
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