At next week’s Salone del Mobile design festival in Milan, British-based designer Christopher Jenner will launch Yixing, a new tea set made using purple Zisha clay from Jiangsu Province in eastern China. “The material was the thing that attracted my attention,” recalls Jenner of his trip to the area three years ago. “The clay, which can be traced back to the North Song Dynasty, is renowned as being the best material for brewing tea.” It has the ability to retain heat and is porous when fired, so that, over time, the flavours are absorbed into the material and released, making each brew taste richer.
It is not the first time Jenner has designed a tea set: he recently teamed up with English silversmiths Elkington & Co (now relaunched as E&Co) on a collection of silver and brassware based on classic techniques such as spinning, hammering and polishing. “As with a lot of my work, I was interested in how to take the traditional and turn it into something contemporary,” he says. The results are a minimalist silver teapot, sugar bowl, milk jug and tea strainer that each eschew any form of decoration.
Jenner is one of many designers looking at teaware in a new way, taking older tea traditions from other parts of the world and making them relevant for Britain, a nation renowned for its tea-drinking habits.