Enfilade

Now on view at the The Goldsmiths’ Centre:

The Craft of Tea, 1660–2024
The Goldsmiths’ Centre, London, 1 May — 27 June 2024

The Craft of Tea, 1660–2024 explores the material history of tea, stylistically and thematically, from 1660 to the present day. It presents remarkable silver objects from the Chitra Collection, an extraordinary private museum of historic teawares, alongside examples by modern and contemporary makers. Over forty notable pieces from the collection will be displayed, spanning the seventeenth to the twenty-first century. They will be exhibited together with loans from the Pearson Silver Collection, the Goldsmiths’ Company Collection, and individual makers. The Chitra Collection team has been a long-term contributor to the Goldsmiths’ Centre’s public and training programmes. The co-curated exhibition is a unique chance for members of the jewellery and silversmithing industry, Londoners and visitors to the Goldsmiths’ Centre to view examples from this incredible collection.

The exhibition is divided into eight themes that take you on a journey from the early beginnings of the tea trade in Europe, through tea taking as ritual, power, and rebellion, to the boundary-pushing teapots of the modern and contemporary period. The exhibits are global in scope, whilst also questioning the preoccupations of UK silversmiths today. Amongst the historical examples in each thematic display, you will find a contemporary counterpart that responds to or extends the ideas under consideration. Whatever your interest—visual, historical, or practical—we hope that you will enjoy this celebration of the craft of making tea.

The Chitra Collection is an unsurpassed private museum of historic teawares. With objects from Europe, Asia, and the Americas, the collection celebrates the global significance of tea and teaware design, from ancient China, through to the present day. In 2011 Nirmal Sethia, philanthropist and chairman of the luxury tea company Newby London, set himself the task of acquiring the world’s greatest collection of teawares to record and preserve tea cultures of the past. Today, the collection, named in honour of his late wife, Chitra, totals almost 3000 objects and is already the world’s finest and most comprehensive of its kind.

Charlotte Dew, Evelyn Earl, Grace Fannon, and Gregory Parsons, eds., The Craft of Tea, 1660–2024 (London: The Goldsmiths’ Centre, 2024), 70 pages, ISBN: 978-0907814450, $16.