The Artful Teapot

I have my own memories in tea- stories my mother would tell me about my Gigi holding afternoon tea with all the glory in place settings and biscuits, the blood thirsty games of Scrabble that would inevitably follow.  There is a picture roaming around the house of my Gigi and a three year old me sitting in a sun room dressed up in the Sunday best savoring in afternoon tea. Even more recently (and perhaps less fastidiously) I find my self drinking tea after every meal and just before bed in the very least. It is amazing to think just how often tea partakes in our lives.  And I use "our" as a term encompassing everyone, and when I say everyone I mean to say every human being on this planet is some how connected to tea.  How! How has this come about, it's not something you would commonly think about, that is the history of how tea became tea.  Perhaps we take it for granted that tea has always been around, as if cave men would stop their day for a cup of earl grey and a hint of cream; but earnestly I have been drinking gallons of tea with out ever stopping to think where the beverage I was consuming came from.  So this past week I began reading the Artful Teapot which talked of the brief history that is tea.  The adventure starting in China, and how it was used as a monetary form as valid as a ten dollar bill, and when the Europeans got a knack for it they tired of only importing and started trading opium filled pipes for tea filled teapots.  And just think, that without the essential brick of tea changing to loose leaf tea there would be no teapot at all.  Not to mention that when the Europeans got a hold of tea and heard of the Japanese tea ceremony, that derived from a tea drinking ritual in china, after noon tea and all of the tea trays, cake plates, creamers,tea tables, sugar tongs, strainers, infusers, tea dresses..., all of these things invented in order to accommodate one substance. The substance that I drink from now, and for some reason I can feel that history with every sip, and its getting stronger with every sip, every line read and write. 

The teapot represents all these things, from etiquette, social conversations, rituals, addictions, all from years of experience and history.  Thinking about the stories and pictures my family has all based around tea.  The collections of tea, tea pots, cups and saucers that roam my home, which rarely end up being used but it's our collection of history.  A collection of memories and conversations that all happen around these illustrious objects that are not only based in function but in moments as well. How does an object elicit such history, how can it possibly entice memories and conversations? How can I make these objects seduce us back to the last art of the afternoon tea, high tea, tea ceremonies etc... Perhaps by harbouring an event of the creation, by making the object inveigle its history. An object that seems to reincarnate itself in every new making.  Letting its self be rediscovered again and again by individuals around the world. But what is the teapot to me? How can I make a form that is a mix between sensibility, ostentatious romanticism, something of valor, silly enough to be serious; Yet always about conversation and taking the time to talk to the people who inhabit your life.  How can I make something that makes you want to find the time for yourself to just ponder everything.  These are the things I'm interested in forming into that oh so familiar shape of the breathing bellowing mother of ceremonies.