tea time

Before I sat down to write this post, I had to make myself a nice cup of tea.

So here I am, with my favourite Yorkshire Gold tea from Taylor's, thinking about tea. Not quite as serene and minimalist as Chardin's Lady Taking Tea (1735), but just as content to stir my tea and watch the wisps of steam curling out and above my cup. And noticing that fat brown tea pots haven't changed much in nearly 300 years.

 

Then again, taking tea is a timeless pleasure and one which punctuates every single day of my life. Even though tea is a constant, tea time and tea cups have been on my mind since several people asked where I found the lovely tea cup fabric. It's by Yuwa and I bought it from Purl Patchwork in New York (see here). I fell for it because I like the way the tea & coffee cup design captures the delicacy and elegance of the cup shapes - rather like a set of designs for Wedgwood bone china cups or Herend porcelain.

I bought it in two colourways. The pale latte one above suits a self-contained, elegant but homely, quiet French tea moment like the one in the Chardin painting. 

And the red would match this wonderfully indulgent, baroque tea and samovar and cakes and fruit and cat tea time occasion. This is 'The Merchant's Wife at Tea' (1918) by Boris Mihajlovic Kustodiev - a riot of colours, vistas and enjoyment.

 

After looking at this, I realised that the only thing missing from my tea moment was something to eat. So I made a trayful of Melting Moments with dark chocolate chips.

Tea and biscuits. Lovely.

                                 ***

Re my last post - the painting on the cover of Dombey and Son is 'A Portrait of Henry Thomas Lambert' (1858) by George Townsend Cole.

Comments

[sammyjo]

i love the fabric. im always drinking a cup of tea while i read through blogs and i realy like 'The Merchant's Wife at Tea' its so colourful.

[Betty @ She's Sew Pretty]

I've never seen The Merchant's Wife painting. It is gorgeous! I'm not much of a tea drinker but I do love cookies and they look delicious.

[Gill]

Jane... a recipe please...pretty please? My only melting moments recipe is in my Form 2 HE notebook! It certainly doesn't have chocolate chips in...I seem to recall it had cornflakes!

[Baleboosteh]

Many, many, many years ago I went on a 6th Form trip to the (then) USSR and brought back several packets of art postcards. The Merchants Wife was in one of them and it has been one of my favourite paintings ever since. I've never seen it reproduced anywhere else. I love it - I think it must be the cat and the fact that she is so obviously enjoying her tea!

Many thanks for a continually inspiring and uplifting blog.
Michelle

[Teresa]

I'm really enjoying Dombey and Son. I think we are having a wonderful treat media-wise at the moment with Cranford, some of the radio four afternoon plays and I, believe, a film adaptation of the wonderful Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is coming our way soon. Bliss. You conjure up more bliss I see by putting chocolate chips in your melting moments (a solid WI favourite, you know). I would recommend some loose leaf tea from www.leafshop.co.uk although I know you are fond of Barry's builders tea. I'll raise my cup to you, Jane as I continue to enjoy this wonderful blog whenever I'm having a break.

[Jane]

I'd love the recipe too - those look yummy!

[Kristina]

I drink tea everyday also, what is your favorite? I love black teas, I have also found that rose tea is very good.

[Sarah]

You've got me wanting go go out and buy a fat brown teapot now. I love the ritual of making tea.

Are they really melting moments? They look delicious, but not what I'd call melting moments, which is two biscuits sandwiched around a creamy filling. Also known as yo yos. Maybe it's an Antipodean thing.

[SnapdragonJane]

Jane - The Chardin was one of the paintings I looked after while an art curator.
Have you thought about putting in the location of the paintings you show in the blog - many will be in accessible collections - the Chardin is usually on display at the Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow.
Where is the merchants wife?
J
x

[Jennie]

Strangely enough, I too am sitting drinking my favorite tea -- Yorkshire Gold -- and enjoying some freshly baked gingerbread (it's that time of year).

It's so hard to find Yorkshire Gold here in the US. I buy it bulk every time I can get my hands on it, and give it as a gift. Perfect with a little half and half and some sugar...

[kmkat]

The merchant's wife suggests so many things to me -- bourgeois complacency, self-indulgence, a little bit of nastiness (look at that smile!), wretched excess, and all of it the year after the Russian Revolution threatened and eventually destroyed the middle class. I am thinking that your own riotous red tea moment would be rather nicer than hers.

[Sarah]

I am what is known in Yorkshire as a 'tea jenny' which is someone who could pretty much drink tea all day! I love earl grey the best but do really like proper builders tea as well, like tarry toot as an ex colleague of mine would say. That fabric is very fetching, it would make a lovely pinny!

what broad shoulders the merchant's wife has! and don't you just hate women being refered to by proxy of their husband?

Love S xx

[Lynne]

Ooh, I used to love making melting moments - mine used to have a cherry in the centre!

[willow]

Lovely post! Do you have Murchie's tea in UK? Murchie's is not sold in the US but my son in law buys it for my daughter from Canada.
Excuse me for a bit, I need to run and put the kettle on!

[Laura A.]

Oh, you would have to do a post about tea (my favourite thing in the world) on day five of a fourteen day detox diet, which forced me to give up tea. I'm very envious of you all!

[Bee]

I love both colourways!
My Nanna used to read her tea leaves every morning.

[Melanie]

I love those two kinds of tea drinking - my Lincolnshire granny would always have a jumbo sized kettle on the Rayburn to fill the big brown teapot on the kitchen table, and there was always time for tea and plum loaf. The formal tea-time with cakes and beautiful china is a rare treat. My best ever tea was at Brown's Hotel (sitting on floral sofas in front of an open fire with cucumber sandwiches and cakes on floral bone china), and it is still my ambition to have tea at the Windsor Hotel here in Melbourne, which is also renowned for its traditional (and expensive) teas. Your Russian picture perfectly illustrates the exoticism of a full-blown tea with all the accoutrements.

[Kate]

I love the way those little things - like tea - that make up the quiet, pervasive moments of life, just don't change much. My teapot that I look at every day is so very similar to the teapot that hundreds of millions of women have looked at every day, even though my life is so different from theirs that I may as well be from another planet.

I read the other day that it has been suggested that the rise of tea drinking was actually the root cause of a population boom in Europe. This is because it meant that you could get your liquids, but that they would be boiled. Previously, anyone who didn't want to drink beer all day was prone to so many waterborne diseases that they died in short order. And since no one knew why, no one boiled the water.

So tes might be the reason you're here today, since without it, your ancestors might not have lived to have the rest of your ancestors...

[Ruthanne]

Oooh how decadent is the Merchant's wife drinking from her saucer?! I don't think I've ever had melting moments - obviously a deprived child with a mother who bought shop Victoria Sponges and Arctic Rolls!!

[MaryjoO]

thanks for the info on the fabric and the deja vu on the Russian painting ... I've seen it in person and she is just "glowing" with satisfaction! You can see where some of the colors for Russian shawls come in, too! Maryjo

[Maryjo]

Reading some of the other comments about the "excess" and "indulgence" in the "Merchant's wife" -- this is completely true. It was the time when a Russian boyar/merchant would "fork over" an entire year's salary for a paisley wool shawl for his wife (and to show off HIS status) -- it was the fashion of the moment. The shawls that survived the moths that are in museums are breathtaking. Maryjo

[probablyjane]

Following on from Sarah's comment - an enthusiastic tea drinker was always called a 'Teapot Annie' in my Isle of Wight/Geordie family.

[sherry]

Tea is wonderful. It warms me when I am cold, cools me when I am hot, soothes and or cheers. It never fails to improve whatever the situation.

[Janis]

Yorkshire gold...i m having yunnan gold from www.teacuppa.com/black-tea.asp ;)

beautiful teacups and table cloths..

[kirsty mitchell]

i've got a fat brown teapot. i love it.
and that kustodiev painting definitely looks like my ideal way to take tea.