TEA AS ART - ART FROM TEA - ART AND TEA

Capturing the quiet pleasures of tea is a theme in many paintings, book illustrations, and even on tea accessories themselves.


The complex yet serenely colourful scenes of chanoyu (the Japanese tea ceremony) often animate room screens, teapots and the other exquisite art and accessories of Japan. In both ancient and contemporary paintings or wall hangings, one can view tea service among friends or between lovers drawn in such exquisite detail that you can imagine yourself along with them in open air teahouses or in a tatami room in the countryside or in a private screen-partitioned room. Many of these paintings also depict the charcoal brazier to heat the kettle, the heirloom cups for guests to admire and to drink from, and the hosts, kimono-clad men or women joining us all over a 'bowl of tea.'



The processing of tea: gathering and drying the leaves, brewing the tea, are a familiar vantage in many Chinese paintings. The 12-paneled work of Cantonese watercolour painter Tingqua (1840-70) is perhaps the most well known showing each stage of the tea processing experience from growing to processing to crating for export. Certainly Chinese artisans have painted, sketched, and contributed to many scenes depicting tea, but perhaps the most important contribution has been the artful design of the first teapot, made today as it was hundreds of years ago in the Yixing area famed for its purple clay. Yixing pots are made to be exclusively used for just one type of tea, because its porous clay has the unique ability to retain the scent and flavour of tea after many uses so that just pouring in hot water will provide the teapot owner with the "taste" of tea.



The other remarkable art form developed by the Chinese was porcelain, what was at first called "china", often blue and white cups and pots and dishes sent along with tea from Canton to London where the British adapted this new-found dinnerware as its own, making the now-familiar "Blue Willow Ware" and finer pots and cups by such esteemed potters as Wedgwood, Minton, and others.



Throughout the centuries, painters not only depicted the people of the time at work or play, but in the social arena, and tea is a running theme from the 17th through the 19th centuries in some of the most illuminating and richly appointed paintings created by such French artists as M.A. Baschet, who depicted elegant family scenes around the dinner table or J.B.S. Chardin's acronym of a painting, M.I.F. which denoted "milk in first."



Dainty hands holding delicate porcelain cups are indicative not only of the class and position, but also the extraordinary quality of what was then a new material for dinnerware: nearly translucent, refined porcelain of Great Britain and France. Gone were the blue-gray pewter, banished was the sturdy crockery, and in their places were ornate or supremely graceful sterling to remind the aristocracy of their wealth and position, and this new, and expensive, way to serve drink and food, on hand-painted, cloud-white porcelain. And sterling tea sets from England, pewter and sterling from our own Paul Revere, and other fine teapots and cups are shown in many paintings from British, American, Dutch, and French painters from Mary Cassatt to John Singleton Copley to Nicolas Muys.



Painters in Russia give us Sunday afternoon images of families sitting on the grass of their summer dacha with a table laden with sweets and black tea made in high brass samovars, smoke spiralling from their coal-laden pipes or couples huddling for warmth around another samovar, drinking from bowls of tea. Picnics in the park, ladies in long skirts talking correctly, sipping delicately in a white latticed gazebo set among the flowers in a summer garden; a chorus of Danish women is sewing around a lace-covered dining table with matching white cups and pot for refreshment between stitches. Indian miniatures of royalty feted with a special cup of tea and an unexpected Spanish still life of flowers, fruit and gold-rimmed teacup. All these, and more, have graced the walls of homes and museums to reflect the many ways the world enjoys its tea.



Tea in artwork is not always serious or quiet, however. Nothing has shown more liveliness or brazen charm than advertising art with bespectacled grandmothers, the old yachtsman himself, Sir Thomas Lipton, or the charm of 19th century illustration on tea cards, that highly-collectible paper art card that came in package of tea then, just as baseball cards braced the pink bubblegum of our youth. The twenties elevated tea box art to a form of soap opera with couples sipping tea in discreet alcoves in a private tea room or a more openly heart-catching drama of a gentleman seducing a chiffon draped woman with a teapot of Chase & Sanborn tea that "gives life new charm."



Photography, too, gives us a glimpse of tea as a daily art: who can forget the piercing black eyes the nomads of the world's deserts gathered around a night-time campfire, drinking tea and recounting tales of their ancestors? Or, memorable bazaars of Morocco, full of exotic fabric curtains, turbaned tea men pouring mint tea from long narrow spouted brass teapots way way down into small glasses with the recommended two or three sugar cubes. Can't you just hear the tumult of train stations in India in travel photos that show chaiwallahs climbing sides of trains to offer chai? And, certainly, there is humour and charm in photographs of ageless Chinese drinking from covered cups (guywans) enjoyed totally one-handed, thumb moving the lid expertly so that the lips can enjoy the day's oolong or puerh as done for decades.


There are those who love to get dirty
and fix things.
They drink coffee at dawn,
beer after work.


And those who stay clean,
just appreciate things,
At breakfast they have milk
and juice at night.


There are those who do both,
they drink tea.
Gary Snyder b. 1930


Tea Staining Your Art Journal Pages
Have you wanted to add "age" to your art journal pages? You can use tea--loose or in bags--for this project. If you're soaking your pages individually in a tray, you can usually stain two sheets at a time. If you add more pages, they're likely to stick together and tear when you try to separate them.
If you're staining bound pages, you'll need to protect the dry pages and keep wet pages separated, too.



KEEP JOURNAL PAGES SEPARATED
If the tea isn't too hot, you can use sheets of wax paper between your bound art journal pages. Wax paper is inexpensive and sold by the roll in the grocery store, in the same section as foil and plastic (cling) wrap.
If the tea is hot, you may need to use foil, plastic wrap, or some other waterproof, heat resistant materials.



HOTTER = MORE ORANGE
To achieve the color that you want, you'll need to experiment. Different teas--regular (black) and herbal--result in different colors. Heat can be a factor, too, especially with black teas: The higher the heat, the more orange the resulting color.



DAB, BRUSH, OR EVEN SOAK THE PAPER
You can apply the tea to the paper with a brush. A sponge brush is ideal for this.
You can use the tea bag as a brush, if it's not too hot.
Or, if your journal pages are loose, you can submerge each page in a shallow pan of tea. Generally, soak only one or two pages at a time.


USE TEA LEAVES FOR MORE AUTHENTIC STAINS
If you're using loose tea, you can pour tea over your paper and let the tea leaves dry in place for a mottled or variegated effect.
For an authentic, uneven effect, some artists prefer another approach: Sprinkle wet tea leaves on top of plain newsprint or other unprinted paper. After dyeing your paper, place it on top of the tea leaves and let the paper dry. Both the top layer (dyed) and the plain underneath layer/s of paper will have interesting blotches of darker tea stains.



RINSING
If you're dyeing fabric, you should definitely rinse the fabric to wash out excess tea and perhaps any tea leaves.
If you're dyeing paper, gently rinse the paper if you'd like it to remain as archival as possible. (See "Archival Issues" below.)
However, remember that wet paper tears very easily. If you have a papermaking kit with a nylon screen, or a "sweater dryer" screen, you may want to place your wet, dyed paper on that before rinsing.


LET DRY, CHECK FOR COLOR, AND--MAYBE--REPEAT
In most cases, your paper will dry considerably lighter than it looked when it was wet. Apply the tea to the color that you'd like, and then dry the paper. Your hair dryer or embossing gun can speed the drying process. However, keep in mind that excess heat can scorch the paper, and concentrated hot air can alter the surface of the paper by making it a bit rougher (more "tooth").
If the color isn't dark enough, repeat the process, or add more tea to the mixture.
Tea generally works just as well the second day, if you let your pages dry overnight. You can use the same batch of tea, perhaps gently warmed to help it penetrate the paper better.



INSTANT TEA IS A GREAT SHORTCUT
For the simplest possible way to tea stain paper, use instant tea from the grocery store. Use approximately a tablespoon of tea for each cup of water. The water should be just warm enough to dissolve the instant tea easily.
Pour the tea mixture into a shallow tray and let the paper soak in it for at least half an hour.
Check for color, and add more instant tea if necessary.



ARCHIVAL ISSUES
Regular (not herbal) tea is generally slightly acidic. No one can say how much this will affect the archival quality of paper. How much tea you use, and what kind it is, can be a factor.
In fact, some people have suggested that tea may make paper even more archival.
However, most people agree that tea-dyed paper and fabric may fade, especially if left in the sunlight very much.
Heat-setting may reduce the fading. Simply iron your pages with a medium-hot iron.
Or, for longer-lasting color--especially if you're staining fabric--add a small amount of alum (sold in the baking supplies section of the grocery store, among the spices) to the tea bath at the last minute. Or, add vinegar to the tea, about 1/2 cup to a gallon of tea.

Mithun Jayaram is an Indian based artist who utilizes used tea leaves collected from his local tearoom. He then goes on to observe the drying process that he subjects his used tea leaves to and creates works of art from dried leaves and other material he recycles.

Jeff Axelrod lived a busy life that brought him all over the country to at last, Sausalito, California where he is an artist with an interesting medium- tea. Using tea he brews he paints with a spectrum of colors and creates intricate works of art.

Eric M. Sternfels' work springs from a sense that inanimate objects possess their own soul and history. When speaking about the pieces he collects for his work, the artist believes the energy of those that designed or made them, of those that have used and enjoyed them.