tea

Nostealgia: 

Nos tea lgia Exploring the memory & nostalgia of tea drinking…

Ritual-isation: 

Ritual-isation The act of tea drinking has become a ritual in many ways. We will explore the roots of these rituals and the memories attached for those involved and the semiotics of these.

Case studies: 

Case studies We will visit specialist venues with association to tea, such as the Roseleaf pub in Edinburgh which serves ‘pottails’ (cocktails in old fashioned teacups) and other tea houses.

Case studies: 

Case studies We will also explore ‘tea communities’…

Case studies: 

Case studies From our research we have found tea communities are mainly private groups which must be signed up for, creating a feeling of exclusivity. There are also tea related groups on Facebook with thousands of followers. We are going to join one of these groups to gain an insider perspective and discuss their memories and reasons for joining the groups with them.

Ethnographic Research: 

Ethnographic Research We will explore the differing views of different generations in relation to tea, as well as speaking to people about their attachment to tea and the reasons for this. We are aiming to carry out a questionnaire to find out which type of items related to tea the public gravitate towards – we suspect that nostalgic items such as the cup and saucer will be the most popular over more modern designs and want to find out whether this is directly linked to people’s memories of these items in their households.

The ‘Britishness’ of tea…: 

The ‘Britishness’ of tea… We will also explore how people’s opinion of tea as a ‘British’/ ‘English’ pastime effects their memories of it. Tea in our society is very much seen as British, with English Breakfast tea and the quintessentially British afternoon tea. Do people have more selective memory in relation of tea which focuses on it as a ‘British’ pastime? Tea became established in UK society when the queen of Charles II brought it to the royal court because she had loved it since her childhood in Portugal.

Ethnographic Research: 

Ethnographic Research The reading by Dyl and Wapner about cherished possessions highlights the importance of having ownership of items that helps adjustment and growth into adolescence. This could assist our research in terms of the materiality associated with a group activity. Do we enjoy having our own cup partly bacause as a child it allowed us to ‘join in’ but retain posession of something personal?

Aim: 

Aim We aim to discover why memory and tea seem so closely linked, and why people place so much importance and nostalgic memories on the act of tea drinking and their experiences of it During our research we found a lot of correlation between our aims and the findings in Daniel Miller’s ‘The Comfort of Things’, which we will model some of our approach on.