Black Friday/Cyber Monday Tea Sales

Looking for an awesome deal on tea and teaware for the holidays? Check out this list of Black Friday & Cyber Monday Tea Sales I wrote for About.com. It includes deals from Adagio, Rishi, Samovar, Teance, teas, Etc. and more. If you have a tea company that's offering a deal for the holidays, please add it to the list! Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!!!

Cool Tea Gadgets

I love cool new teaware (more here and here). This post is dedicated to techie teaware and other tea-related gadgetry.

Williams-Sonoma variable temperature kettle -- OK, so the "a temp for b class of tea, c temp for d class of tea" thing is a gross generalization, but selecting specific temperatures for your water is incredibly useful for making tea if you know what temperature you should actually use

Yanko Design's Turtle Tea Kettle -- Best for blacks and tisanes, as it reaches a full boil

Three award-winning tea kettle designs -- Very cool concepts! I wish the first one could indicate more than one temperature, but it is undeniably awesome anyway. I love the magnetic trivet idea! The second one seems a bit dangerous (how do you avoid spilling boiling water when you release the switch?), but is a novel idea. The third is cute, but I wish it had a built-in strainer for us loose-leaf tea drinkers. Which is your favorite?

"Sonic Boiler" -- Quite possibly fraudulent, but interesting nonetheless.

Tea Forte's "Tea Over Ice" Pitcher -- Cool, but not as cool as Hario's "Ice Brew Teapot," which I saw for the first time at Sungarden's booth at the World Tea Expo. Ice slowly melts in the top compartment, filters past tealeaves and then collects in the bottom compartment. It's a similar concept to their "coffee water dripper". Sadly, I couldn't find an image on their site...

A mug that cools tea sip-by-sip -- Very clever...

Handpresso for handmade espresso -- I suppose you could also use it for "Redpresso" or rooibos that's ground espresso-style, and maybe even for other partially-ground teas and tisanes. What do you think?

Cute, Unbreakable French press mugs and tea infusers -- There are lots of options like these on the market these days.

Collapsable travel strainer for tea -- I like that the strainer can also store tealeaves for reinfusions.

What are some of your favorite tea gadgets?

Tea Chocolates

Did you get your mom something tea-related for Mother's Day? I did! Check out these yummy tea chocolates from Charles Chocolates and Teance. Other mom-friendly tea gifts include:

Flowering teas
Flower-based tisanes
Chocolate teas
Cool teapots
Afternoon tea for two (or more)

What did you get for your tea-loving mother?

Fortnum & Mason Sale

Fortnum & Mason is having a 10% off and free shipping sale for all Daily Candy readers through January 31st. Be sure to check out their tea collection and tea accompaniments, like biscuits and jams in their Food Hall section. Yum!

Daily Candy is also offering a 30% off sale for "previously featured" items on the Target "Red Hot" shop, which includes a cute star-shaped mug. Rad.

Haiku Teacups

Love haiku? What about tea poems? And... teacups? Check this out. They're made by the writer of my tea cups blog. Cool!

Teapot Condom

This is the weirdest "teapot" (and the weirdest condom) I've ever seen. Just... wow. You can find more rubbery weirdness here, if you dare. Happy Labor Day! (Maybe I should have saved this for Halloween!)

Cool Teaware Sighting

I was walking through Williamsburg the other day and saw this:
























Awesome! I am continually surprised by the new and innovative teaware designs that are increasingly available. (OK, you could use this for coffee if you wanted. Still.) You can see more teaware posts by searching for "teaware" or "design" on the Vee Tea blog.

Cute Teaware

I'm feeling a bit down today because someone snatched my phone on the street last night as I was carrying groceries home. What better to cheer me up than cute teaware?!*




















I recently saw Peek Keep's collection of cute teaware, including a Finish tea set and a felt bunny tea cozy (currently on sale). Fun! (BTW, felt is an exceptional insulator. It was accidentally discovered by ancient humans when their wool garments bunched and thickened in heat and humidity, and was made in cold climates as a top-notch form of protection against the elements. Functionality aside, the felt bunny tea cozy is, as the title of this post suggests, cute.)




















If you want to get your bling on while you sip, you'll love Charles and Marie's 2 Carat Mug. Diamonds may be a girl's best friend, but fair trade, organic tea is a way better friend to workers and the earth!
















Green with Glamour also has some cool teaware, including
Grandma's Tea Set, which is a handmade ceramic tea set cast from an original tea set and glazed with non-toxic, natural glaze, and a
Fair Trade Ceramic Elephant Teapot for a daily dose of tea and whimsy.




















*I think of this as the tea world's equivalent of Zoolander's Orange Mocha Frappuccino. I just hope it doesn't result in my friends exploding in a tragic gasoline fight.

A Moldy Brain Begets a Moldy Teacup

Surrealist design team Death By Drone recently designed this little number, "A Moldy Brain Begets a Moldy Teacup." Although it's not stated in the title, the image implies that a moldy teacup begets brightly-colored balloons. Cute.

Teaware Collections

Interested in teapots? Here's a quick (and completely incomplete) listing of teaware collections I've stumbled upon in the last few months. Enjoy! If you would like to add any, please leave a comment with a link. Thanks!

Sadly, the much-anticipated Sparta Teapot Museum still has not opened... However, many pieces from their collection have been shown at my hometown's own Mint Museum of Art and Mint Museum of Craft + Design. (There's a strong tradition of pottery in North Carolina, due in large part to the huge deposits of red clay in the Piedmont region, where I was born.) A few previous exhibitions:

Made in China
With a Grain of Salt (salt-glazed pottery of England and North Carolina)
and, my personal favorite...
The Artful Teapot

Yi Xing teaware and other ceramics by Ms. Rong Jiang, who recently passed away

Tea With Friends blog on tea caddies

A recent show of teapots in San Francisco

The Rosemary's Sampler blog's teacup collection

Teaware Sale

NYC-based home shop Clio is having a sale starting today. Check out their teapot collection (the quirk award goes to their "iron" teapot, the Mirza) and other cool tea products ("shattered" cup, tea towels, and more). Have a great weekend!

92 Thompson St., b/t Prince & Spring Streets
212.966.8991

More Cool Teaware

You may remember that a while back I wrote a teaware post on Charles and Marie and followed it up with their (then) new product, the "On/Off" mug. Well, they sold out of their "On/Off" mug almost immediately and have decided to sell a new "Hot/Cold" version (with a presale to make sure they have enough this time around).

Here are a few of their other tea products that I haven't talked about yet:

cheeky NYC-streets-meets-Dutch-china 5-piece tableware set

super-engineered "radiator" mugs

a little something for those of you still drinking tea from teabags!

Cool! I'm already looking forward to seeing what they carry next!

Tea Caddy

My very dear friend and fellow blogger Tajee just sent me a gorgeous tea caddy from Japan! It was wrapped on the diagonal, which is how many gifts are wrapped in Japan. (This is a tradition which comes from the use of ornate pieces of cloth ("gift cloths") to wrap gifts.) The caddy itself is laquered (a traditional Japanese technique) and has a lid in the style of shibori (resist-dyed) kimono fabric. (Can you tell I have a background in textile design? Tajee knows my tastes all too well!) I'll use it next time I'm enjoying matcha with friends. Thanks, Tajee!!!

PS--I'll be away on Monday, but check back on Vee Tea for more tea news (including a World Tea Expo forecast, info on a new tisane made from hops, what's up at P.S.1 in NYC, and the current hype on caffeine during pregnancy) later on next week. In the meantime, have a great weekend!

Chic Tea Gifts

Looking for a chic tea gift? San Francicso-based Violet has some cute items including a flowering tea set, an American honey flight, and (my personal fave) The Teastick. Eco-minded folk will also love their sustainable gifts. Cool.

New Filter Cup

There's an interesting new filter teacup on the market. It is a little more convenient than most in that it has a flipable flat filter that allows you to add the leaves without removing the filter from the cup. It's also easier to clean than most filter cups. However, it has no mechanism for stopping the leaves from brewing (unless you count pouring the tea into another cup, which defeats the purpose of the convenience of a filter cup). You win some, you lose some, but it's always exciting to see innovation in the tea world.

Record-Setting Teapot

Famed Bauhaus designer Marianne Brandt has set a new record in the world of tea. Her 1927 ebony and silver-plated brass teapot sold at Sotheby's for a whooping $361,000 in December. Theodor Wende's 1927 Bauhaus tea set was also sold at the auction for $180,000.

Read more on the sale or a criticism of the design's dance between functionalism and formalism. If you're interested in female designers with relation to teaware, check out the Women Ceramicists exhibit, which includes a few very interesting teapots and tea sets, as well as a good deal of flatware and coffee sets.

On/Off Mug

Charles and Marie has done it again! I've posted about some of their hot teaware before, but here's their new fun toy: a mug that operates on binary. Cool.

Global Warming Teacup

OK, so everyone has seen this global warming mug already. But there's a new one out, and it is marketed specifically as a teacup. Interesting...

Read more on global warming and tea in one of my previous blog posts.

A Watched Pot...

Apparently a watched pot (or kettle, as the case may be) DOES boil... at least when it's a digital simulation intended for entertainment and increased sales. Wait a few seconds and enjoy the show.

More Teaware

Hidden Art Shop is one of those cool British boutique sites that makes you really wish the dollar weren't doing so poorly these days.

Tempest in a Teacup

Two-Faced Teacup

Gold Branch Single-Serving Tea Set

Hummingbird Cups and Saucers

Delicious.