Second Edit

Teapots: Why Do We Need Them?

Everything in life has its own purpose. And every single purpose must be served well. To foster our lives we have our jobs for money, experience for its teachings, the nature for its beauty, a million number of books for knowledge, and the continuous reinvention of teapots for our tea. Yes, even these nifty, little kitchen pots have their purpose.

In the early times, about 9^th century, tea wasn’t served through drinking vessels. It actually served 500 years of medicinal purposes for the Chinese and the Japanese. Then, the tea leaves were rolled, dried, grounded into powder, and mixed with salt and hot water to be whipped into froths. It was during the Ming Dynasty of the1600’s when the first tea serving and drinking vessels were created out of zisha, also called “purple” clay from the YiXing (pronounced ee-shing) Region of China. These first tea dining pots were very favored by tea lovers because in time, the clay eventually absorbs the flavor, smell and color of brewed tea.  These drinking pots were very small, enough to make one or two servings, a reason for Chinese to bring their own YiXing pots to drink directly from its spout which is less practiced nowadays. These small pots were viewed as influences of the earliest European tea drinking pots.

It was the Chinese who gave Europe her first tea. Even so, there are scholars who identify two influences in mid-1600’s that might have brought the European design of the known tea vessels today. One of these is the Islamic coffee pots. These were then in-style in England and Europe coffee houses in that time. Then there are also the imported Chinese wine vessels. It was the Earl Cadogan, the first Englishman known to own these wine pourer imports, globular in shape, greatly influencing today’s design of the European tea vessels. Europe developed the first porcelain tea kitchen furniture in 1710, after finding the clay near Meissen, Germany which can be turned into porcelain that are comparable to items of distant China, using some breakthrough technology. Constant innovations followed to promote culture, tradition and for trading and marketing purposes. Victorian art trending and style were seen in these designs ranging from Renaissance, Gothic, Chinese, Moorish, Japanese, other great floral forms. Tea kitchen furniture nowadays are simpler and functional in nature, but will always carry the designs of its mother creations.

Besides being a fancy part of our modern kitchen rack, tea serving and drinking vessels are popular in homes and more especially in hotels and restaurants today because of how tea benefits humanity. Tea drinking pots are always, now and then, used to complement tea. Tea serves various benefits to our health, making it second to water, as the most popular drink in the world. Camellia sinensis, first discovered by Shen Nung, the second emperor of China in 2737 B.C., gave way to the first tea taste which can now be served in conventional forms: green, black, ginseng, herbal, oolong, rooibos, and white tea, served hot, or because of taste differences, even cold. And no one can definitely remove this warm-weather evergreen drink from our culture anymore, given all these benefits it gives us: the chemical polyphenols protecting our body cells from oxidative stress, preventing blood clotting, lowering cholesterol levels, neutralizing enzymes, deactivating cancer promoters and stimulating our immune system. There is also theanine, an amino acid unique to tea, and other vitamins and minerals that are known to help fight against mutagenic agents, delay our body’s aging, help fight high blood pressure, help fight against viral and bacterial infection and help improve the functions of the digestive and excretory systems. Totally, tea drinking pots serve a much greater purpose, just like everything else in our life.