Illustration Friday - Tea

All the Tea
Illustration Friday 02.24.06
Theme: Tea

I love tea. I have a whole cupboard full of tea.
Behind the tea in the picture is much more tea. It is three layers deep.

Read on only if you'll enjoy seeing some of the thoughts, notes, photos that preceded choosing my final illustration.


Immediately after I saw the week's theme of "tea", I wanted to do something about having tea with Gertrude Stein. Lots of people had tea with Stein, served by Alice, of course. And I always liked that poem of hers with the lines:

Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.
Susie Asado.
Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.
Susie Asado.

Notes I made when I googled: "Gertrude Stein" tea
02.24.06 - TEA
From Tender Buttons: Lovely snipe and tender turn, excellent vapor and slender butter, all the splinter and the trunk, all the poisonous darkning drunk, all the joy in weak success, all the joyful tenderness, all the section and the tea, all the stouter symmetry.

[emphasis mine]

It's Down to Earth for Gertrude Stein A biographer charts the reality behind a legendary life. by Dottie Horn http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/end496/stein.htm 1920
Paris, 27, rue de Fleurus. Friends and strangers, aspiring writers and others, drop in around tea time at the Paris apartment of American Gertrude Stein, famous after having published the novel Three Lives in 1909 and the long prose poem Tender Buttons in 1914. Gertrude's lover, Alice Toklas, serves cookies she has made and tea in white cups at the gatherings, for which no invitation is required. Gertrude talks about writing, about the importance of concentration, of tapping into the essence of being, or soul.
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11. Ernest Hemingway Like a museum ... we ... loved the big studio with the great paintings. It was like one of the best rooms in the finest museum except there was a big fireplace and it was warm and comfortable and they gave you good things to eat and tea and natural distilled liqueurs made from purple plums, yellow plums or wild raspberries. (...)

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Other photos:
the cup and mug cupboard:


I moved a couple of cups so I could call this "Time for Tea with George Orwell" but the Orwell mug isn't very clear...

and finally, the detritus of my cup of tea this morning:




This appealed to my minimalist urge and was very nearly the picture I chose...but I'm not feeling very minimalist today.

I almost took out all the tea from the cupboard to photograph. But that is probably a picture to do for my decluttering blog.

If you've read this far and love tea, you might enjoy the Tea Mind, Be Kind blog of Maitri Libellule.

be kind,
'zann