Titles and Abstracts:
Interactive Artist Installation
Heaven Earth Tea Hut -- Ines Sun, Independent Artist, NYC
The Tea House is a multimodal series of works forming a collective installation involving both the artist and the individual participant to complete a tea and calligraphy ritual in silence. It can encapsulate any corner anywhere in the world and collectively create an ephemeral space of retreat, stillness, and awareness where one can do nothing and be nothing. The teahouse and surrounding design are there to serve the viewers' visual and inner peace and lead a path to the zazen practice of releasing one's grip on the world and "opening the hand of thought."
Keynote Lecture
The Domestication and Aestheticization of Camellia sinensis -- Victor Mair, University of Pennsylvania
The world today recognizes tea as a flavorful beverage that is appreciated for its subtle fragrance and invigorating taste, but it wasn't always that way. In its earliest days, as used by humans, tea was not thought of as an aromatic drink, but at best as a bitter decoction employed for medicinal purposes. In its botanical homeland, around the source of the Irrawaddy in South Asia and Southeast Asia, it was by nature a subtropical plant, although its various cultivars spread to more temperate zones in nearby regions. It was the Chinese who domesticated tea and developed a whole set of practice and procedures for drinking it. They also bequeathed to all the languages of the world -- except one -- its name.
Tea Tasting and Sensory Lecture
The sensory evaluation of tea and what sensory qualities and emotion responses do U.S. tea consumers want in specialty green tea (Camellia sinensis)? -- Ann Colonna, Oregon State University
A general overview of sensory evaluation and how it relates to the experience of tasting tea will be discussed followed by recent consumer research conducted on U.S. grown tea. The first objective of this research was to understand consumer perceptions and emotional responses to a relatively novel product, U.S.-grown specialty tea. The second objective was to test the quality perception of U.S.-grown tea vs tea from other well-known growing regions around the world and how each tea is uniquely described by U.S. consumers. Nearly all tea consumed in the U.S. is imported, presenting a potential market opportunity for U.S. producers. Camellia sinensis is now being commercially grown in at least 15 U.S. states, including Oregon. In an effort to understand consumers’ motivations for purchasing tea and the associations between socio-economic and product-related factors, we conducted a consumer survey followed by a central-location test (CLT). A comprehensive online survey (n=2,921, 65% female, aged 18 and over, USA) probed attitudes about country of tea origin and consumption habits. The CLT explored the taste perceptions and emotions of specialty green tea consumers from Portland, Oregon (n=108). They evaluated U.S., Chinese and Japanese green teas for overall liking, color, aroma, flavor, sweetness, bitterness, astringency and aftertaste. Products were rated first blind coded, then branded. Of interest was how consumer perception of a novel product changes when country of origin was revealed. Consumers also responded to questions about quality, purchase intent and product expectations. Utilizing check-all-that-apply methodology, consumers both described the sensory properties and their emotions toward each product. Correspondence, principal coordinate and mean impact analyses indicated the sensory and emotion responses that were associated with the most liked teas. A tea tasting experience will be a component of this session.
Tea and Health
Green Tea and Heart Health: The Science Behind the Sip -- Richard Bruno, Ohio State University
Green tea has long been celebrated for its health-promoting properties, with emerging science demonstrating anti-inflammatory activities that support cardiometabolic health. This presentation will discuss the unique composition of green tea, particularly its catechins, and how it differs from other teas derived from the Camellia sinensis plant. The influence of brewing methods on bioactive potency will also be explored. Through a complementary discussion of preclinical and clinical evidence, the presentation will explain how green tea catechins exert anti-inflammatory effects both directly and indirectly through gut microbiota-derived metabolites. These mechanisms help position green tea’s cardiovascular benefits alongside improvements in gut health. Audience members will gain a clear understanding of the translational research that informs practical recommendations for incorporating green tea to support heart health.
Tea Extracts as Antivirals -- Sandra Adams, Montclair State University
The antioxidant and beneficial health effects of tea are due to the polyphenol and flavonoid compounds extracted from the tea plant. Tea extracts have been reported to have antioxidant, antibacterial, anticancer, and antiviral properties. Our research investigated the antiviral and antioxidant effects of green and black tea extracts in cultured cells against several viruses. Tea extracts were found to reduce or block the production of infectious viral particles by interfering with the early stages of the virus replication cycle and by reducing virus-mediated oxidative stress. Drinking tea is considered safe. Research on tea components and their safety may provide a means to maintain and improve human health and decrease the incidence of certain diseases.
Tea and Architecture
Tea in the Garden Literature of Qing China -- Hui Zou, University of Florida
Drinking tea as a cultural and poetical activity is well documented in the garden literature of Qing-dynasty China (17th-19th centuries). In ancient Daoist scripture Zhuangzi, drinking tea can be related to the health concepts of yangsheng (preservation) and weisheng (hygiene). In the “tea saint” Lu Yu’s Cha Jing (The Classic of Tea) of the Tang dynasty, drinking tea as a cultural phenomenon (biwu zhi yin) is described most suitable for the sober and ethical people and its meanings are far-reaching. Lu also emphasizes that making and drinking tea in gardens or landscapes enables people to live spiritually in nature and the cosmos. Lu’s tea scripture was respectfully quoted by Qing-dynasty emperors for judging the best spring water in China and imperial gardens. In emperor Yongzheng’s poetry and portrait paintings, drinking tea was usually related to reading, thinking, and imagining in a serene garden space. Drinking tea as a cultural expression and poetical exchange in gardens are emotionally narrated in two 18th-century classical literary works: the novel Dream of the Red Chamber and the prose autobiography Six Records of a Floating Life. Through analyzing the tea scenarios in garden literature, the research attempts to capture the tea spirit embodied in Qing gardens.
Trajectories of Chanoyu in a Global Context -- Ken Tadashi Oshima, University of Washington
This talk will examine the history and principles of chanoyu, the Japanese practice of tea, and the chashitsu (teahouse) from their origins under Sen no Rikyū (1522-1591) and their evolution to present day. The style of sukiya that espouses rustic simplicity expressed in such teahouses will be examined through its material expression and practice in everyday life. Seen as a paradigm for modern design by architect Horiguchi Sutemi (1895-1984), tea house design will be considered both as a total-work-of-art through the design of architecture, furnishings, utensils, as well as notions of functionalism. In further exploring the teahouse as a minimal space for daily rituals, this talk will examine expressions in modern residential design and implications for sustainable living.
Femininity and Class in Anglo-American Tea Rooms -- Jessica Ellen Sewell, University of Virginia
In the both the British and the American context, tea has long been associated with femininity. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was imbibed by women at formal teas in their domestic parlors and partaken of in high-end, middle-class, and working-class tea rooms downtown. This paper explores the architecture and interior decoration of tea rooms at both ends of the class spectrum to explore how they express the gender and class meanings associated with tea.
Tea and Material-Visual Culture
Teapots Shaped by Cultural Forces: 17th-Century Art Theory and Innovative Yixing Teapot Design -- Katharine Burnett, UC Davis
“Purple-sand” (zisha) ware teapots made in Yixing have been prized among tea connoisseurs for hundreds of years for their suitability for holding heat, enriching the flavor of tea, and their espresso-cup-sized shapes that are often charming or whimsical. Few know, however, that prior to the 17th-century, these teapots were about the size of a typical British teapot today. It is only in the late Ming that potters began making the tiny teapots for personal use that have become both famous and prized. Additionally, it is little known that the patron who first requested a small-scale Yixing tea pot was the independent literatus Chen Jiru, close friend of Dong Qichang, an eminent scholar-official in the Ming bureaucracy. Both art critics and theorists, these men were some of the most influential intellectuals to participate in the newly excavated discourse of originality, a discourse that promoted the idiosyncratic expression of the self, and a discourse that steeped through Chinese society in the 17th century. Though the effects of this discourse are beginning to be discussed in painting and calligraphy, its effects on late Ming zisha ware – and tea culture generally – has never before been recognized. This study explains that it is the discourse of originality that prompted the production of the personal and personalized teapot in the late Ming period, and marks a fundamental moment and pivotal development in the history of China’s abiding tea culture.
Radical Tea Ceramics: Kuwata Takurō’s "Dual Sensitivity" and the Contemporary Discourse of Chanoyu -- Meghen Jones, Alfred University
Contemporary Japanese ceramic artist Kuwata Takurō (b. 1981) has emerged as a significant figure in international ceramic art through his radical reinterpretation of the teabowl. Through analysis of his articulated concept of “dual sensitivity”—the deliberate tension between functional utility and abstract aesthetic expression—this presentation examines how his work simultaneously engages with and challenges traditional chanoyu material culture. By investigating Kuwata’s strategic appropriation of historical techniques and conscious dialogue with early twentieth-century ceramic precedents, this research demonstrates how contemporary avant-garde approaches can paradoxically reinforce the cultural relevance of chanoyu. The study contributes to broader theoretical discussions regarding the transformation of historical practices in global contemporary art and offers new frameworks for understanding the continued vitality of Japanese tea culture in international contexts.
Leafy Matter: Tracking the Materiality of the Tea Bush -- Romita Ray, Syracuse University
From Athanasius Kircher’s “Tea Herb” (1667) to the contemporary tea bush, the commercialized tea plant demonstrates a long-standing need to simplify its vegetal structure such that tea pluckers can pick its leaves efficiently, while allowing it, in the words of one modern-day planter, to “generate vegetative growth.” My presentation will therefore focus on the tea bush as a material artifact that serves, first and foremost, as a productive plant commodity. Yet, its ability to generate new leaf is carefully controlled through pruning and plucking practices, even as its plant sentience is mediated by an array of multispecies interactions between humans, plants, and nonhuman animals. Looking back at historic sources that can be traced back to the seventeenth century, I track its transformation into a locus of horticultural practice, commercial extraction, and biopolitical encounter that has come to define the tea bush as a conspicuous sign of plant capitalism.
Tea Production and Environment
Seventh-Century Kyoto Culture and Tea Production in the Yamashiro Basin -- Morgan Pitelka, UNC Chapel Hill
Kyoto has long been known as the epicenter of Japan’s culture of chanoyu, as the site of Sen no Rikyū’s most important activities as tea master in the late sixteenth century and later as home to the revived Sen family tea schools throughout the early modern era. The seventeenth century was the key era in Kyoto’s emergence as the hub around which the tea world in Japan revolved. During this period, Kyoto was rebuilt after a century of civil war, and the main tea schools established their headquarters in the city to take advantage of patrons like the many major Buddhist temple complexes, the imperial court, the warrior administrators of the city, and the rich merchants and artisans who made Kyoto their home. Another benefit of operating out of Kyoto was its close proximity to the most productive tea plantations in Japan, located south of the city in Uji, which was blessed with fertile soil and an abundant water supply. This paper will explore the distinctive geography of Uji, its close cultural and institutional connections to Kyoto, and the growth of both chanoyu culture and tea production that occurred in the region over the course of the seventeenth century.
Climate, Herbivory and Tea: When a pest is not a pest -- Colin Orians, Tufts University
Climatic changes are directly and indirectly impacting agroecosystems around the world and often pose a risk to farmer livelihoods and human wellbeing. The effects of climate can be direct, via reductions in growth and reproduction (yield), but can also be indirect, via changes in pest pressures. Too often the focus of climate change research has been on yield but this approach ignores the fact that many farmers depend on the production of high quality crops, like tea. Tea quality is largely determined by the production of secondary compounds that give tea its flavor and health attributes, and both climate and herbivores are known to induce changes in plant chemistry. While pests can reduce yields they can also increase quality making it critical for farmers to assess their capacity to leverage increases in quality in the face of yield reductions.
The Worldwide Production of Tea -- Shermain Hardesty, UC Davis
Tea is grown commercially in every continent except Antarctica. Seven million tons of tea were produced worldwide in 2022. China continues to be the largest tea producer, generating 48% of the world’s tea in 2022; however, it consumes most of its production and thus ranks only as the third largest exporter of tea. India is the second largest tea producer, and the world’s largest exporter of tea. Kenya has become the world’s third largest tea producer and the second largest tea exporter. Several other countries in eastern Africa are increasing their tea production.
Amid this growth, the global tea sector needs to become more sustainable—environmentally, socially and economically. Environmental sustainability means that tea growers need to reduce their carbon emissions and energy use, enhance the quality of their soil, and increase their biodiversity by engaging in natural pest control and crop diversification. Social sustainability related to tea has become much more important; it concerns labor, gender and equality issues. Thus, some multinational tea companies have been selling off their tea plantations in developing countries to local companies. Smallholders are now responsible for 60% of the world’s tea production. To achieve economic sustainability, most of them must generate profits and become significant contributors to rural development in many developing countries, such as Kenya. However, climate change has become particularly challenging to smallholders because it is reducing the yields and quality of their teas.
Small amounts of tea began being produced in the United States in the early 1800s. After the Civil War, the USDA distributed five to ten thousand tea plants annually for approximately 10 years mainly in the Southern states, but expectations of cultivating tea as a valuable commercial product were not realized. A German entrepreneur tried to develop a Japanese tea colony in California in 1869 but his venture failed quickly because it used contaminated water and had poor financing. Currently, Argentina is the largest supplier of tea to the United States; it is very inexpensive and most of it is used to produce ready-to-drink teas. Consumer interest in organic, locally grown, and specialized premium teas has been increasing, primarily in Europe and the United States. Currently, limited amounts of tea are being grown in at least 15 states.
Disseminating Tea and Tea Culture
Rims, Remnants and Reasons: A Critical Bibliography of Tasseography from Lu Yu to the Highland Seer -- Eric Ramírez-Weaver, UVA
Reading in and across traditional texts such as Lu Yu’s ninth-century Classic of Tea and divinatory manuals such as the twentieth-century Highland Seer’s Reading Tea Leaves, this paper explores diachronic semiotic strategies exploring tasseography from its putative Chinese origins in 229 BCE through its popular modern development. Prognosticatory practices benefited from porcelain designs such as the Ming Dynasty gaiwan, influencing directly the material culture of tea leaf reading paraphernalia. Following colonial expansionism, by the seventeenth century normative divinatory practices throughout Europe included tasseography. These cross-cultural influences resulted in modern tea sets designed for fortune telling, such as those manufactured by Paragon in Britain during the inter-War period (cf. Divinatory cup and saucer, Paragon, ca. 1932-39, The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, Boscastle, Inv. 1398). Such cups included pictographs of significant patterns, offering lexicons and tools for divinatory practice. De-colonizing the history of tasseography through historiographic review and a focus upon the material culture of divinatory cups and saucers, this paper critically redresses the questions of divinatory use, cultural diffusion, and material commercialization.
Global Tea and the University Curriculum: Some Notes from the Field -- Joseph Sorensen, UC Davis
My presentation will outline some general trends in courses about tea and tea culture
taught at the university level, focusing on US institutions. I will then provide updates on the
workgroup “Teaching Tea: Culture, History, Practice, Art” which is part of the Japan Past &
Present (JPP) project housed at the University of California, Los Angeles. As will be
demonstrated during the talk, the JPP project provides a repository of teaching materials
(readings, images, explanations, exercises) so that users may create modules tailored to any
individual instructor’s content and approach. Finally, I will speak about the UC Davis Global Tea
Institute’s progress in creating a tea studies curriculum, and the GTI’s efforts to develop a major
and minor course of study focusing on tea.