Fowler Exhibition Tells Story of the Tea Craze in the West

Steeped in History: The Art of Tea Exhibit at the UCLA Fowler Museum continues to bring tea enthusiasts history and art by telling the story of the tea craze in the West. When tea first arrived in Europe in the early 17th century, it was not readily accepted. Tea drinking caught on quickly, however, in The Netherlands, where the import arrived along with Chinese and Japanese porcelain vessels for its preparation and serving.

By the mid-seventeenth century the European upper classes had fully embraced the three exotic caffeinated beverages—coffee, tea, and chocolate—and gradually these imports became more affordable and their consumption spread to the general population.

As the regimen of tea was popularized and perfected, artists and marketers strove to create sophisticated tea accoutrements, and these became status symbols. Furniture was especially designed for afternoon tea, like the elegant French tripod table featuring a tea-drinking scene, circa 1680, on display.

The European porcelain industry took off after the long-held Chinese secret of porcelain making was finally understood in Germany in 1708. The exhibition features many early English teacups, sets, and caddies, as well as works on paper and paintings that attest to the status of tea in Europe.

The first tea to reach America was introduced by the Dutch, and the habit of tea drinking spread quickly among the colonies. In order to control the profits of the tea trade, the English Parliament sought to eliminate foreign competition by passing legislation that required colonists to import their tea solely from Great Britain, which led to the colonists buying smuggled tea—at half the price of British tea. This—accompanied by a number of tax acts that collected revenues for the Crown and at the same time penalized colonists’ consumption of smuggled tea—led to tea becoming forever associated with revolutionary actions, of which the Boston Tea Party is only the best known.

One of the highlights of the exhibition is the inclusion of several notable early American oil paintings showing the role of tea in colonial life, including works lent by the National Gallery of Art, the Maryland State Archives, and the Chicago Historical Society. Other works on view, such as a silver sugar urn from the Fowler collection by noted Boston patriot and silversmith Paul Revere, recall the role of tea in Revolutionary protests. A stunning array of elaborate tea vessels reveals the continuing popularity of the beverage in American culture today.

Related Museum Events

September 20, 2009 1–4 pm Kids in the Courtyard: The Perfect Blend

Do you like cooking or creating fancy drinks? If so, you’ll love this month’s activity of blending teas. We’ll have several herbs available for you to create your own special tea blends. Then you’ll scoop them into take-home tea bags.

September 24, 2009 7 pm Fowler OutSpoken Lecture: Sanjay Subrahmanyam: From Elephants to Tea; The Nilgris Under Colonial Rule

UCLA professor of history Sanjay Subrahmanyam focuses on the transformation of the Nilgiri Hills over the course of the 19th and early-20th centuries as they became a significant producer of tea under the colonial plantation system. First ‘discovered’ by the British in the late 1810s, this area (literally the ‘Blue Mountains’) emerged first as a resort and an area for elephant hunting, before eventually becoming one of the favored centers of colonial tea production together with Assam, North Bengal and Sri Lanka. The changes that the plantation system wrought had significant effects both on the indigenous populations of the area, and on the relationship with the animal world. Co-sponsored by the UCLA Asia Institute.