Thursday 30 April 2009

Afternoon Accoutrements

I’m not much of a shopper, but I go weak at the sight of anything to do with tea or coffee. I have an eclectic collection of milk jugs, tea pots, caffetiere, stove pots to make Turkish coffee, trays, tray cloths, tea strainers – you name it.

When visiting Hong Kong recently, I found two amazing steel gauze “thingies” to go into the lid of a tea pot, so that you can make the tea with real leaves, at the delightful price of $2 each. In the same shop on Nathan Rd I found a tiny brown stoneware teapot, almost too small for one cup. I suspect it had just arrived from China, as the manager of the shop was still unpacking a box of them on the floor. They were wrapped in a local newspaper; humble beginnings with a price tag to match, $4.

Today, I came home from a local charity shop with a milk jug from an Irish pottery. It is decorated with fruit and each fruit is named in French – don’t ask. This is the same place I have bought a selection of blue pottery cannisters to store a variety of fruit and green teas. I have a coffee tin from Israel, a large yellow tea pot from California decorated with a black cat, a 6 cup pot in the shape of a green aga stove, another in the shape of a white bee hive, and a brass desert coffee pot from Bahrain. This is not including the four day to day tea pots (one cup) and cupboard full of mugs and cups.

When I finally put my feet up in that great tea room in the sky, someone is going to have a lot of sorting out to do!

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