UK
One of the joys of tea has been the astonishing variety, range and artistry of the cups and pots it’s served in. Whether clay, porcelain or silver, China Xiying, French Sevres, German Meissen, or the hundreds of British or Japanese, the long history of teaware art, craft, and design.
The Chitra Collection is surely the finest and most comprehensive display of the best of the best. The collection was built by the co-founder of Newby Teas, Nirmal Seth, starting in 2011. It is named for his wife, whose death was the driver for his searching out teaware. The collection now numbers 1,700 pieces with an estimated value of $200 million. It was publicly displayed in London in 2016 where work is underway to house it in a museum, and it includes the “Egoist” teapot, worth over $2 million, with 1,500 encrusted diamonds, designed by its founder. The collection spans 13 centuries, starting from the Song Dynasty in the 10th century BCE.
The Newby tea company has a tea factory in Kolkata and mainly sells to five-star hotels and Michelin-starred restaurants. Its main market is Russia.
Copyright restrictions mean that no images from the Collection can be shown here. This link accesses a wonderful display and description of all the pieces www.chitracollection.com.
Seth is s very disdainful of how “the history and culture of tea has been forgotten completely. Tea has a glorious history but not many know about it… The first thing to do is to revive the tea culture and the best way to do that was to preserve the character of tea.” That last phrase – “the character of tea” elegantly captures what make fine teaware so integral to the past history and present experience of tea.