Alessi is a housewares and kitchen utensil company in Italy, manufacturing and marketing everyday items authored by a wide range of designers, architects, and industrial designers — including Achille Castiglioni, Richard Sapper, Alessandro Mendini, Ettore Sottsass, Wiel Arets, Zaha Hadid, Toyo Ito, Hani Rashid, Tom Kovac, Greg Lynn, MVRDV, Jean Nouvel, UN Studio, Michael Graves, and Philippe Starck. The Alessi company in the UK is worth around £2.4 million.
The Japanese tea ceremony is a Japanese cultural activity involving the ceremonial preparation and presentation of matcha (抹茶), powdered green tea, the procedure of which is called temae (点前). While in Europe it is known as the "tea ceremony", it is seldom ceremonial in its practice. Most often tea is served to family, friends, and associates; religious and ceremonial connotations are overstated in European places. The English term "Teaism" was coined by Okakura Kakuzō to describe the unique worldview associated with Japanese tea ceremony, as opposed to focusing just on the ceremonial aspect, a perspective that many practitioners frown upon.
Chinese tea culture includes all facets of tea, both physical and spiritual, that significantly influenced Chinese culture throughout history. Physically, it consists of the history of tea cultivation, brewing, serving techniques, methods of consumption, arts, and the tea ceremony. Tea culture is to take tea as a carrier, and through this carrier to spread various arts. Tea culture is an integral part of the excellent traditional Chinese culture, and its content is very rich. Tea culture is the organic fusion of tea and culture, which contains and embodies the manifestation of a certain period of material and spiritual civilization. Tea culture is the combination of tea art and spirit, and the expression of tea art through Spirituality. It emerged in China in the Tang dynasty, flourished in the Song and Ming dynasties, and declined in the Qing dynasty.
Pu'er or pu-erh is a variety of fermented tea traditionally produced in Yunnan Province, China. In the context of traditional Chinese tea production terminology, fermentation refers to microbial fermentation, and is typically applied after the tea leaves have been sufficiently dried and rolled. As the tea undergoes controlled microbial fermentation, it also continues to oxidize, which is also controlled, until the desired flavors are reached. This process produces tea known as hēichá. Pu'er falls under a larger category of fermented teas commonly translated as dark teas.
The hibachi is a traditional Japanese heating device. It is a brazier which is a round, cylindrical, or box-shaped, open-topped container, made from or lined with a heatproof material and designed to hold burning charcoal. It is believed hibachi date back to the Heian period. It is filled with incombustible ash, and charcoal sits in the center of the ash. To handle the charcoal, a pair of metal chopsticks called hibashi is used, in a way similar to Western fire irons or tongs. Hibachi were used for heating, not for cooking. It heats by radiation, and is too weak to warm a whole room. Sometimes, people placed a tetsubin over the hibachi to boil water for tea. Later, by the 1900s, some cooking was also done over the hibachi.
Chinese tea generally refers to a variety of teas which are grown or consumed in China.
Tea culture is defined by how tea is made and consumed, how people interact with tea, and the aesthetics surrounding tea drinking.
A tea set or tea service is a collection of matching teaware and related utensils used in the preparation and serving of tea. The traditional components of a tea set may vary between societies and cultures.
The history of tea in Japan began as early as the 8th century, when the first known references were made in Japanese records. Tea became a drink of the religious classes in Japan when Japanese priests and envoys sent to China to learn about its culture brought tea to Japan. The Buddhist monks Kūkai and Saichō may have been the first to bring tea seeds to Japan. The first form of tea brought from China was probably brick tea. Tea became a drink of the royal classes when Emperor Saga encouraged the growth of tea plants. Seeds were imported from China, and cultivation in Japan began.
Tea utensils are the tools and utensils used in chadō, the art of Japanese tea.
The Classic of Tea or Tea Classic is the first known monograph on tea in the world, by Chinese writer Lu Yu between 760 CE and 762 CE, during the Tang dynasty. Lu Yu's original manuscript is lost; the earliest editions available date to the Ming dynasty.
The Treatise on Tea is a book written by the Chinese Emperor Huizong of the Song dynasty in 1107.
Tibetan cuisine includes the culinary traditions and practices of the Tibetan people in the Tibet region. The cuisine reflects the Tibetan landscape of mountains and plateaus and includes influences from neighbors. It is known for its use of noodles, goat, yak, mutton, dumplings, cheese, butter, yogurt, and soups. Vegetarianism has been debated by religious practitioners since the 11th century but is not prevalent due to the difficulty of growing vegetables, and cultural traditions promoting consumption of meat.
Tea Ware Pictorial (茶具圖贊/茶具图赞) is a book by Shenan compiled in 1269, and is the earliest picture book on tea ware used in preparation of Song dynasty tea cake for drinking.
The Cha Pu is a short work written in 1440 by Zhu Quan, the Prince of Ning, the 17th son of the Hongwu Emperor of the Ming dynasty, and relates the methods of tea preparation and degustation. It is considered by some to be a milestone in Chinese tea culture.
Matcha is finely ground powder of specially grown and processed green tea leaves originating in China traditionally consumed in East Asia. It is mostly produced in Japan today. The green tea plants used for matcha are shade-grown for three to four weeks before harvest; the stems and veins are removed during processing. During shaded growth, the plant Camellia sinensis produces more theanine and caffeine. The powdered form of matcha is consumed differently from tea leaves or tea bags, as it is suspended in a liquid, typically water or milk.
Senchadō is a Japanese variant of chadō. It involves the preparation and drinking of sencha green tea, especially the high grade gyokuro type.
Ueda Sōko-ryū (上田宗箇流) is a cultural aesthetic practice, or tradition, of Japanese tea ceremony that originated within the samurai class of feudal Japan. The tradition is commonly called the Ueda Sōko Ryū or Ueda Ryū. The founder from whom the tradition takes its name was Sengoku period warlord Ueda Sōko. The customs, etiquette and values of the samurai are woven throughout all aspects of the tradition's practice of chanoyu, a practice that has continued unbroken for over 400 years.
The Special utensils are historic and precious Japanese tea utensils (茶道具).
Tea is an important part of Japanese culture. It first appeared in the Nara period (710–794), introduced to the archipelago by ambassadors returning from China, but its real development came later, from the end of the 12th century, when its consumption spread to Zen temples, also following China's example; it was then powdered tea that was drunk after being beaten. In the Middle Ages, tea became a common drink for the elite, and in the 16th century, the art of the "tea ceremony" was formalized. It is now one of the most emblematic elements of Japanese culture, whose influence extends beyond the simple context of tea drinking. Tea-growing developed in the pre-modern era, particularly during the Edo period (1603–1868), when tea became a popular beverage consumed by all strata of society. New ways of processing and consuming tea leaves were developed, starting with sencha, a steamed oxidation-stopped brew that became the most common.
