Op, Pop, Or Just Tea?

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31057, 12 May 1966, Page 2

Op, Pop, Or Just Tea?

(By STELLA BRUCE) As a world of teadrinkers although coffee is edging in fast —we are surprisingly indifferent about what we make it in. Those chipped and rather grubby-looking earthenware jobs, kept under the rather

sentimental impression that they “make a good cuppa,” should really be pensioned off.

And now is a good time to do it; designers, for centuries hog-tied to traditional shapes and sizes, blinded, like the rest of us, by tea-maki mystique, have suddenly let themselves go. There are whole ranges of truly space-age teapots coming into the shops at the moment and the tea they make tastes just as good. There are beautifully-shap-ed hand-thrown porcelain teapots, with protectively-coated bamboo handles. There are stainless-steel models of slender elegant design (and pay no heed to those who say you can “taste the steel” in the tea. You can’t... not in these anyway).

If you want something really exotic and are prepared to pay for it what about an elegant rectangular teapot smothered in a miniprint in real gold? Combined teapots and water jugs, stacked one on top of the other to keep each other warm, are rather natty. But if you want to keep things traditional there's nothing to be ashamed of—and plenty of manufacturers still cater for you.

Just out is a teapot in traditional Old Chelsea design, complete —ith matching milk jug and sugar bowl. I never thought I’d live to see the day when the tea cosy would become acceptable in

the most avant garde drdes. But it has. And now this break-through has been achieved, we can probably expect sugar-tongs, slop-basins and other strange instruments of the tea-brew-er’s art to come clanking back into the most with-it teatable.—Provincial Press Feaures.