Of Tea And Teapots

I have loved and collected tea pots since I was a child.  Really.  And boxes, particularly old wooden ones that originally housed candy or stationary.  But is is about tea pots and my love of the world of serving tea that I write today.

The idea of a cup of hot tea can be quite calming even before the kettle boils and the tea begins steeping.  The first thing my husband does each morning is to make me a cup of tea ("Happy Wife, Happy Life").  Charles will agree that it took some time to get the brewing time exactly right, but now he does it so well that I can't start my day without a cup of tea from him!  Dark black English breakfast tea by Twinings.

Once the day is set in motion, other teas will do— Assam, Darjeeling, Oolong, and a variety of green teas.  I make those cups myself.  To the Assam and Darjeeling I will add milk and honey and take a mug into the studio as a companion to the morning.

But in the dead of winter, when there is nothing but grey on the ground and in the sky, I sit with a beautiful teacup and saucer, sipping cup after cup of steaming amber liquid from one or another teapot from my collection.  I don't really have teapots that Lloyd's of London needs to insure, but I have my Grandmother Allen's Rockingham teapot,

along with a child's blue willow pot, and teapots to match almost all my sets of china (which are legion).  I even have three little village tea sets.  My dear friend and former sister-in-law, Cindi, gave me a pink and blue village set, and we immediately sat down and had mint tea in it.  We spent a delightful afternoon with that tea set, and it has always been on display in my home.  These village sets are worth a chapter on their own-- another post, I think.

Teapots call to me when I walk into an antique shop, and I answer automatically.  Sometimes I find a teapot with a matching sugar and creamer, though having the three pieces is not a criteria.  When we visited our friends Mary Kate and Bonnie in Monterey, Massachusetts a few years ago we naturally made the rounds of the antique shops.  I walked through the door of one shop and knew immediately that a teapot waited for me.  I moved slowly around the room filled with lovely objects, waiting for the teapot to reveal itself.  Mid-way down one wall the most gleaming piece of porcelain I have ever seen was waiting for me (you don't believe that?  Neither did Charles).  Despite its age, it looked as if it had never held steeping tea.  It is beautifully wafer-thin, and as I studied it I realized how difficult it would be for me to pour scalding water into it.  Even knowing that, I motioned to the shop owner and waited as she lifted it from its glass shelf.  It still holds my imagination, this beautifully shaped pot of classic, graceful proportions.

The creamer is delightful-- a small clutch of herbs is the perfect complement:

Another special gift was from my beautiful and witty friend, Gloria.  Shaped like a conch shell lying on one side, it is a perfect representation of Gloria's irrepressible humor, and I cannot pass by it without thinking of her.

Then there are the rice-patterned china tea pots.  This beautifully translucent porcelain has tiny rice-grain carvings cut into the piece before it is glazed.  The glaze then collects in the holes, and when it is fired, the tiny holes fill with glaze and allow the light to come through.  Lifting a rice-grained teapot is like lifting a vessel of blue and white light.

I am not the least bit snobbish in my collecting.  I enjoy inexpensive creamware and heavy stoneware, and these tea pots (small-ish and lovely to cradle in your hand) mix well with any sort of setting.

This one is a reproduction of an antique piece.  It is truly a work of art:

Fitz and Floyd created a beautiful circular pattern with this grey-and blue:

Another circular pot is an over-the-top beauty (thank you, Cindi!!!) that always gets a second glance from guests:

And these are my kitchen workhorses, used to steep pitchers of Southern table wine, "Sweet Tea":

This next tea pot falls into the category of "fun" pots.  Look at the sun detail on the yellow piece— I cannot keep from smiling when I use it (and from the chips, it has been used a good bit)!

I think, however, that Judy Brater, of Knoxville, has made the most interesting of my "fun" pots.  This one came to me through an accident of time and place.  One week when I was teaching at the Folk School, a woman walked up to me as I was filling my over-sized mug with hot water for yet another cuppa and announced, "You have my mug."  It took some back and forth and much laughter to realize that "her mug" was one she had made, and one I carried with me every time I left the house!  I told her I wished so often that she made teapots, and she said that she occasionally did, and that she had taken one recently to the Arrowmont School Gift Shop in Gatlinburg.  We were living in Knoxville at that time, so I whipped out my cell phone and called Charles.  This pot was waiting for me when I got home that next weekend (many thanks, dear husband)!

Blue and White always look pert and ready for steeping dark leaves:

These are Hall's pieces, from their Silhouette pattern.  It is, technically, a coffee pot, with a cumbersome drip apparatus that sits over the large open top, but the shape is so traditionally teapot-like that I use it that way (think summertime and iced tea on the porch/patio).  My Irish grandmother had this china.  It was a Jewel Tea collection that was sold off the back of the travelling Jewel Tea truck in the '30s and '40s.  There is even a small platter for scones and tidbits!

And both of Charles' grandmothers had Jewel Tea's Autumn Leaf pattern.  He inherited some of their pieces, which was the beginning of his collecting bug.  This is one of his Autumn Leaf Teapots:

Here is Bethy's chintz tea set, a gift from Granddad when she was only weeks old!  We use this child's set in learning the motions and manners of pouring and serving tea.  One day she can take it home with her— but first we will let Ethan grow up a little and not be so prone to break things.  I keep it in the dining room cupboard, and when she is by herself with me, she asks if we can "play tea" with it.  She very painstakingly helps to lift it from its shelf, including the little embroidered doily it sits on, then goes to the linen chest of drawers and chooses napkins for us to use (do I need to add that her choices are usually in the pink line?).

The little silver spoons, which fit this tiny set so well, are actually the miniature spoons you use with salt dips (of course I had them!):

We are using the smallest of the Portmeirion teapots to practice pouring tea (and water) into her new butterfly-patterned demitasse cups.  She will graduate from the one-cup pot to the two-cup, then to the largest of the pots.

In the basement closet are Christmas teapots, two matching the Cuthbertson Christmas China, and others that are just delightful without being a match for anything other than the spirit of the season.  I will share these with you later in the year. There is even what I call the "Thanksgiving teapot" packed away, and some small pumpkin-shaped ones!  What is a season without a special pot for celebrating?

I am a shameless collector, and there are a few teapots I still crave, though I could never, in good conscience, pay the hundreds of dollars they cost.  Royal Copenhagen's Full Lace pattern is one, and on a quiet day when nothing presses, I will look it up on line and stare at the computer screen the way a teenager stares at a picture of her first love!  Another long-distance love affair is with Belleek's famous basket weave pattern teapot with tiny shamrocks scattered sparingly near the handle.  I will confess to being weak-kneed when I find one in a shop (always new; evidently people never let these teapots out of their hands!).

So, now you are a party to one of my greatest weaknesses:  a love of all things tea-ish, for the ritual of tea with friends or family, and for the beautiful serving pieces that make the simple act of drinking a cup of tea a special event.  I hope Bethy will share that love as she grows older (especially with her British roots), and that the collection will pass to her one day.  She may not want everything I've amassed, but that's quite all right.  Remembering tea with Granmma will be enough for me.

Asparagus Fern

Charles was weeding the garden after the heavy rains of a couple of days ago (everything grew three inches overnight!), when I saw that he had cut away all the Asparagus Fern.  I was able to stop him on his way up the hill to the compost bin, and filled a large pottery pitcher with the feathery wands.  They are too soft for words!

Charles' "Man Shed"

Too much clutter in the back yard, Charles decided, and too far to walk for tools for digging and carrying and mulching.  So, the back of the Studio is becoming a tool shed for him, complete with a metal roof.  Poor oak leaf hydrangeas, enduring the building right up to the edge of their bed!  I will offer them an extra sip of hydrangea feed as a small solace for their inconvenience.

More posts of the progress of the "man shed" to come.

Another Embroidered Grid

I have been playing with the idea of grids again.  They are actually great fun to embroider— especially if they are not perfectly aligned.  Actually, much of life falls into that same category of non-perfection being more interesting than the excruciatingly perfect.  This is one I did on a doodle cloth that has been floating around the studio for some time.  You can see the blue spots on it from my spraying a bit of dye on it months ago.

After this grid was done, I immediately began to think of ways to improve the next one.  There are so many possibilities when breaking down space into small segments.

Adorables Sleep-Over

Yes, finally it happened— after almost a month of dry weather, last evening brought rain and thunder and lightning with high winds, and the Adorables, who are both frightened at the sound of thunder, spent the night with us!  Ethan, now three and a half, got up just after I'd gone to bed, and needed to be held for more than an hour.  He asked questions about thunder, lightning, where the thunder lived, what Mr. Thunder's house was like . . . .

Finally, I had to crawl into his bed with him to get him to sleep even a little bit.  This was no small trick, since his bed is the air mattress on the floor of one of the bedrooms!

The puzzle is how Bethy managed to sleep through all the booming and bright flashes of light.  She is usually quite sensitive to the thunder.  Not that I am complaining.  What would I have done with two little ones awake and scared in the middle of the night?  Charles, an indulgent grandparent, is a grump when his sleep is disturbed.  No help there!

About 3:30 a.m. I managed to crawl out of Ethan's bed.  It took almost a half hour to do this.  I have never been so happy to fall into my own bed!  Then, just before 6:30, Ethan was up.  He called for "CHUCK!!!" at the top of his voice, then walked into our room and looked me right in the eye and said he wanted me UP.  NOW.  I heard Charles chuckle beside me.  Bethy added to the swelling ranks of the bedroom.  "All right.." I looked at Charles.  "But when Grandma gets up, e-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y gets up."

But the fun did not stop there.  There was the bath after breakfast.  I managed to find bubble bath and Johnson's Baby Shampoo for The Event, unrolled the bath mat, and when the tub was full of children and soapy cloths, I turned on the bath jets.  There was laughter, mounds of bubbles, splashed water— there has never been so much action in my bath!

To clean their hair was the problem, as I cannot bend over a tub for more than a minute.  In the end, I simply put them in the shower and I, fully clothed, sat down on the bench and used the hand-held spray to wash and clean the soap out of their hair.  When we got out it was hard to understand how I could be the wettest of the three.

Their mom, Julie, will come and have lunch with us, and when she leaves, this house will be sooooo quiet!  Too quiet!

Help In The Garden

Every gardener needs a little assistance once in a while.  Bethy and Ethan were helping me to water the containers this afternoon.  What they lack in ability they more than make up for in enthusiasm!

It's been a long time since I saw flowers taller than I.  I wonder what Ethan was thinking?  Look at the calculating way he is studying the stalks.  When his dad saw the photograph, he suggested Ethan was thinking of "climbing the beanstalk."  Unfortunately, he might be spot on!

The English American

I have just finished reading Alison Larkin's semi-autobiographic story of an American baby who is given up for adoption to a British couple.  At age 28 she decides to make contact with her biological parents, and the adventure of a lifetime begins.  It was a good read, funny, poignant, informative . . .

Good summer reading!

The Beauty of Old Things

I spend part of Sunday afternoon repairing a quilt made by my husband's grandmother.  It is the quilt his father kept with him and is very worn by regular washing by indifferent hands.  I am repairing the rips and missing batting from a bag of old quilt scraps I found at a Flea Market many years ago.  No matching fabrics, but fabrics from the same era.  I eventually found that matching the shape of the damaged piece is beyond my skills, so I have been putting squares or rectangles over the tears.

A great feeling of satisfaction is my reward. 

Keeping her quilt alive is a joyous project, though rather hard on my hands and back.  But as I don't believe it has to be completed immediately, it has become my on-going project.  One day it will all be done, and I can smile at the little scraps that patch the patchwork.

How amazing— Iva Claiborne stitched these beautiful quilts (all of them slightly different sizes, as they were meant for different beds) in the evening in a corner of her living room, never dreaming that her "economies" were to be cherished things of great beauty to a grand-daughtr-in-law!

The Before and After Garden

It has finally happened:  the heavy work in the garden has ended for the spring, to be picked up again in the fall.  The temperature and humidity are too high to work past about 10:00 a.m., which gives us only enough time to do maintenance, not to do proper digging and building.  Here is the Before and After Story.

When we bought the house in September of 2008, it was easy to see the potential of the back yard, but difficult to pour money or sweat into it because the Knoxville house had to be sold first, and something had to be done about my hip, back, and leg so I could actually do the work.  We were living between the two places, visiting Penny Lane and then back to Pedigo Road, where we stayed the majority of the time, moving in small increments the furniture and boxes and things too messy to allow the public to see (I thought of my studio as a working environment; the realtors saw it as clutter— could I please clean it up or pack it all away?).  I spent the winter months staring out the windows of the Penny Lane sun room dreaming of the garden and studio that should be there one day.  This pre-sale photo by the previous owner was my view from the upper back of lot:

The building on the left eventually became my studio (here it is still in its detached-garage-state), and the odd assortment of angles on right is the house, U-shaped around the patio.  I have tried to take photos standing in the same (approximate) location so you can see the changes we have made.  Today the view is this:

Phase one:  Stacked Stone Walls.  The first thing that HAD to go was the black retaining wall.  The previous owners had the lower terrace carved out of a hill that came right to the house, taking down trees and making room for the addition of the detached garage.  Because I am a sane woman, I never thought of pulling down the wall, only of covering it up.  The wall is built of recycled rubber (tire) timbers that will never rot.  But, an ugly black wall that will not rot is still an ugly black wall, and a black wall in a garden is somewhat less than inspiring.  I found pre-cast stone at Lowe's and began to bring home small loads of it, deciding to build a small wall on the north-west side of the sun room where I would plant one of my favorite shrubs, hydrangeas.  This would be my "test" wall, the one that would decide the future of my masonry explorations.  Once accomplished, I would have the hands-on experience to begin the rather large wall-sheathing project—or to drop the idea and think of something else to dream over.  I read everything I could get my hands on about building stacked stone walls.  I had done some small, raised beds in previous homes, so I knew just enough to be optimistic about the large-scale process, but optimistically cautious.

This is the hydrangea bed, soaking up the little sliver of morning sun it can get in a day:

A single little mophead is making a valiant effort to bloom this summer:

After this minor success, I found my father's four-foot long level and began to work on disguising the black walls with heavy pre-cast stone, using a snow shovel with a flat blade to get a level bed for the stone.  The stones, by the way, weigh 23 pounds each.  I didn't weigh them, but a friend of ours built a retaining wall beside his driveway of the same stone, and he weighed them before he started.  I am glad I didn't know how much they weighed until deep into the project— each stone is equal in weight to a small child. This is an instance of that classic adage, ignorance is bliss.

I have still not worked out how to finish the stairs to the upper terrace.  As they are now, they rise steeply and have very, very narrow treads so there needs to be some re-engineering of the space, perhaps even cutting out the rubber timbers and starting over.  As I sit here thinking about it, I have made the command decision that the lower stairs will be next year's project.

Phase two: upper terrace walls left and right.  This entire landscape was conceived as an attempt to level up the slope of the yard.  This is the right side, originally (notice the day lilies that dwarf the bushes behind):

It was here I learned most of what I know about building a wall on uneven ground.  That bottom row, which drops as the hill slides downward, was such a pickle to level!  You can just see the second raised bed built behind this one (which was actually a phase four project):

Phase three:  lower terrace flagstone floor where the two large mulched areas originally were.  There was a terrific amount of litter from the mulch that was tracked in, and there seemed no way to keep a clean house but to put in stone patio extensions on each side of the lower level.  The work, however, was beyond me.  Charles called in the pros and had it put in after the Knoxville house was sold.

On the right side (above, in the circle of stone), in front of the studio, there was originally a small fountain that Charles hated.  Charles hates any water feature as he had a bad experience with a swimming pool in the back yard of a house we owned earlier in our marriage (the bad experience was that it had to be kept clean).

The past winter abetted him by heaving the fountain out of the ground.  He would not re-seat it, but began to make rather gleeful plans to beat it into pieces with a sledge hammer before carrying it off to the landfill.  I was able to find a home for it with Jill and Joe in Knoxville where it has an unthreatened existence outside the bedroom window.  And against all his complaining, I began to think of the fountain's replacement.

The idea of replacing the fountain with yet another water-thingee horrified Charles.  But I found one I liked that was above ground, with a wide bowl.  The Adorables could play there without slipping into the in-ground bowl of the original fountain, I decided, and Autumn Hill delivered and set it up for us at the end of last summer on the left patio extension.  We had debated this issue until the end of last spring, when we had to either plant something in the right-side hole or fill it in.  A lovely dogwood tree was the choice to live in the spot once occupied by the green, in-ground fountain.  This spring we moved hosta from a too-sunny location on the side of the house to grow in front of the sun room and down one side of the new fountain area.  The plants are thriving, as you can see here:

Phase four:  upper terrace second set of beds and stairs (incomplete).  Once we removed the huge beds of day lilies, the upper beds were very uneven and had more slope than I'd originally thought, so Charles and I put in two small raised beds, with irises on the left, and a larger bed of mixed plantings on the right.  The tall plants with the small magenta flowers are in the mulliens (or mullens) family and are quite aggressive.  But the rabbits use that to move through the yard to nibble at the small herb garden near the house.  Please also notice Charles' bird bath.  There are an awfully lot of dirty birds here.  They line up and take turns in the bird bath, and when that is backed up,  the big ones come to the fountain!

Then the steps to this area had to be addressed.  They are laid with huge bricks rather than the stone I used everywhere else because the narrower brick could be adjusted for the large roots of trees that seem to have chosen that particular spot to converge.  With the drought of the past summers, I am reluctant to further damage the trees by cutting into their root system.  The stairs are incomplete because they require my getting on hands and knees to do the work, which I am not supposed to do.  In small doses, I was able to finish what we have.  Extending the stairs will wait for next year.  I did lay them so that the rise is shallow and the tread is wide enough to accommodate my foot without half of it hanging off.  Charles' wave petunias grace the upper level.

Phase five:  mammoth planting.  Before we started planting the beds, Autumn Hill planted the perimeter of the yard for us, moving some shrubs and setting up boundaries for the shrub backdrop to the beds.  They put in hydrangea, a snowball virburnum, cherry laurel, forsythia, camilla, and formosa azalea.  After this we began to plant the beds but have paused now to wait for the summer and fall shrubs and flowers to come on the market.  I left spaces for mixing the seasons in planting so there is some color in the garden throughout the year.  I really look forward to finding perennial mums later in the season.

These are some photos of the flower beds.  The lamb's ear seems determined to take the prize for fastest-growing:

Here is oak leaf hydrangea, a gift from my sister:

Euphorbia by the walk way to the studio (to bloom later, but lovely foliage in the meanwhile):

One of several mosses, this is the ice plant:

A tiny bird bath balances on the edge of a wall, in the shadow of the lamb's ear:

Parsley and lemon balm:

Lavender, which languished for two years in a large pot.  Once in the ground, though, it must have taken a liking to its new home, because it has grown, bloomed, and started spreading the way children uncurl from sleep and stretch arms and legs in all directions:

Cone Flower, which was labeled "compact," but doesn't seem to realize it should stay small:

A sun-loving fern, Jacob's Ladder, has great textural appeal:

The containers are also planted.  They are  bunched on the patio and sprinkled through the beds, as well.  Marigolds, which are the essence of the summer sun:

Creeping Jenny, restrained in a pot with summer hyacinth to keep it from gobbling up the garden (garden journals call it a "thug," but it is so appealing, thug or not!):

A pot of mint, without which a Southern garden cannot be complete.  How would we have iced tea without mint and a wedge of lemon?

Strawberries— the pot is a mass of little green and becoming-pink berries.  And to make things even sweeter, my niece,  Nahum, brought me a second pot of strawberries yesterday, so we will be snacking all summer!

Geranium, this one kept for its beautiful foliage and not its wimpy little blossoms:

Coleus, a miniature variety called "Indian Frills":

Phase six:  For the fall.  This depends upon how we feel, if digging and hauling stone fits into our plans and if our bones will agree to that much labor the last month or so before Thanksgiving. We've ordered hundreds of spring bulbs from Breck's, so there will be great excitement here in October when they arrive.  And I remember beautiful button-sized mums from my mom-in-law's garden that I would like to find in the fall perennials section of the nursery.

And that is the story of the Penny Lane garden, to date.  As a garden is never static, it will evolve over time into something more stable than what we have now.  The plants that are unhappy in their present positions will want other light or water locations and will need moving or replacing next spring.  There will be mistakes to correct.  But for all the work, it is a real pleasure to sit on the patio and look up the hill at the garden Charles and I worked so hard to put in.  The birds eating and bathing, the lizards lounging on the warm stone (and keeping an eye out for the larger, protein-hungry birds), butterflies amongst the patio containers and every-present squirrels and chipmunks are a source of never-ending delight.

And there is the "help" the Adorables give us with the watering.  Yesterday we had to come inside and change into dry clothes.  Ethan has learned to sneak around behind me and suddenly divert the stream of water from the hose with his hand on the nozzle.  He was squirted back for his efforts.  Poor Bethany, standing beside us, horribly wetted and complaining of our behavior . . . .  It is hard to act one's age in a garden when there are children about!

Royal Wedding

I love the pomp and ceremony of a royal event, though it took me a while to really wake up and take it all in.  By my second cup of tea, I was in fine form, enjoying the choral music (particularly) and the organ and small orchestra and brass.  Sitting here waiting for "The Kiss," I am so impressed by the affection of the English people for the Royals.  They must be the only people in the world whose royal family is non-political enough to be so loved.

Grandma Bragging Again

I had to.  The Adorables are just so . . .  well, adorable!

Note from Wednesday, 5/4:  Remember the pink-and-white-striped sketchbook I made Bethy several weeks ago?  Yesterday afternoon she and I sat together in the studio at one of the work tables, elbow-to-elbow, working in our respective sketchbooks.  In an hour she had filled her sketchbook with drawings, using my colored pencils.  When she was done, she showed me the last page, with a sun shining brightly.  "Would you like to hear the song?"  she asked me, and she turned to the first page and sang me through the entire book!  This is a wonderful example of the creator having an entirely different concept of the use of an item than the recipient of the gift.  And, what a use!

Disoluble Fabric Results

Finally!!!  I thought I would never find the time to finish this, but today the weather was threatening and the first sprinkles sent us in out of the back yard early on, so today became a day to finish projects.  I had four house projects on my list, and finishing this was the third.  One more to go . . .

My original piece was blocks of color for sky, tree, and meadow.  I laid a piece of sheer silk chiffon underneath the Aqua Bond sandwich and stitched a tiny bit on the machine (enough to hold the silk in place), but did the majority of stitching by hand-- 98.99%, actually.  It was obsessively stitched, covered almost without letting the ground show through!  When I had exhausted the stitch possibilities and felt that every tiny bit of fabric and thread/yarn/soy silk was thoroughly attached, I added beads to the meadow grass.  So there are straight stitches for grass and sky, and french knots for the little meadow flowers and the tree.  The tree trunk was a series of closely-spaced outline stitches in differing shades of grey.

The tree was quite a dilemma.  The foliage began life as a lot of random straight stitches over the darker green scrim and yarn, then I made the straight stitches into seed stitches.  It was still awful.  Next I added more straight stitches to fill in the spaces between the fat seed seed stitches, but the more I stitched the more I saw it was simply  a mess that could not be salvaged!  So, as a last-ditch effort to pull something from all the time I'd spent on this project, I put french knots on top of everything.  I also used rayon thread for the tree foliage, which is a bear to sew.  I remember saying "Dear me!" several times as the thread tangled and twisted back on itself.  But when it was finished, I really, really liked it.

In this photo the piece is lying in the bottom of my kitchen sink.  I couldn't wait for it to dry to photograph it.  When I rinsed it out, there was no discoloration in the water, so nothing faded.  And not one little piece of scrim or gibblet of thread floated free, either.  Whew!  I poured the water from the first rinse, when the Aqua Bond was strongest, over the strawberry plants.  Don't gag-- I read that algae and kelp are used as fertilizer in European countries!

It may not be completely Aqua-Bond free, and if it is a bit stiff when it dries, I'll just rinse it again until it has a soft hand.

Now, how much fun is that?