Tea and coffee services

Country: Japan

Manufactory: Satsuma

Date of establishment: the end of the 19th - the beginning of the 20th century

Porcelain Story

Recently I went with my family to the beautiful metropolitan museum of Bogdan and Varvara Khanenko. Been there many times. And still, with each visit, it was possible to discover something that had not been seen before, not noted, not carefully considered. And then there was such an intriguing reason - the museum staff decided to put up a small exposition of porcelain products dedicated to the theme of tea drinking and everything else related to the enjoyment of desserts.

We got great pleasure from contemplating the delicate painted beauty of products produced at the famous porcelain manufactories in Vienna, Sevres, Meissen, in England, China, and Russia. Our home collection contains hundreds of dishes from these and many other manufactories. Somehow they were not specially selected. It just so happened that over the years of collecting, fantastically beautiful Ukrainian, Italian, Austrian, Bohemian, English and Soviet teapots and tea sets were slowly accumulating in our storerooms. And in recent years, this tea and coffee part of our collection has been especially often replenished with products from Japan and China found in Western Europe and Scandinavia.

I decided to show you some samples of such products. Although I understand well that it is extremely difficult to get a complete picture of their beauty and the complexity of applying various techniques when creating them. These teapots, coffee pots, sugar bowls, milk jugs, saucers and cups are so multi-layered that you want to look at them, bringing them closer to your eyes. Moreover, some cups made of the finest (but incredibly strong) bone china are extremely thin and, if you hold them up to a bright lamp, you can see how almost transparent they are. And at the same time, on the bottoms of some of them, in the light, you can see the trademark of the old Japanese masters - a portrait of a geisha, replete with many fine details. If the lamp is turned off, then this portrait disappears and the usual white bottom of a teacup remains in front of your eyes ... Such a miracle.

I won't bore you further with a detailed description of these fabulous pieces of porcelain art. I'd rather tell a short story, as they say, in the subject. One day, a group of graduates from a prestigious London university decided to visit their old professor. All of them have already become very successful businessmen. They had something to share with the person who taught them a lot in their student years. Some guests talked about their successes, some listed the difficulties they had to face in real life.

Having offered everyone tea, the professor brought a tray from the kitchen filled with various cups - porcelain, glass, crystal. Some of them were simple, others very expensive.

When the guests quickly dismantled the dishes, the professor said: - Pay attention to the fact that almost every one of you took a cup that is more expensive and more beautiful. Simple and cheap remained untouched. There is something to think about ... It seems to everyone that it is normal to have the best for yourself. But not many think about the fact that this does not affect the quality of tea in any way. After all, the cup itself does not make tea tastier. In fact, all you wanted now was just tea, not a cup. But you not only chose better cups, but also unwittingly tried to compare them with those taken by your colleagues. Understand: life is tea. And cups are work, money, position in society. Cups are just tools to sustain life. What cup we have does not fully reflect and does not affect the quality of our lives. Sometimes, concentrating our attention on the cup, we forget to enjoy the taste of the tea itself. So: the happiest are not those people who have all the best, but those who are able to extract all the best from what they have.

The old professor is probably right. Definitely right. Right in the main. But not everything, in my opinion. Drinking delicious tea from an ordinary cup is a joy. Drinking delicious tea from the cups that I told you about today is bliss.