Here are 100 books that The Book of Tea fans have personally recommended if you like
The Book of Tea.
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I fell into the world of tea by chance in the 1980s when I gave up a career in higher education to open a 1930s style tearoom in southwest London. I grew up in the 1950s in a typical British family that drank tea throughout the day but little did I know, as I baked endless supplies of scones and cakes for the tearoom at 4 am every day, that I would end up writing books and magazine articles, editing a tea magazine for the UK Tea Council, speaking at world tea conferences, training staff in hotels, travelling to almost every major tea producing country, and eventually working today as Director of Studies at the UK Tea Academy.
I dip into this must-have book all the time – for pleasure but also to learn and check facts. The four authors own the wonderful tea store, Camellia Sinensis in Montreal, Canada. They are extremely experienced in tasting and selecting teas from around the world for their business and just love sharing their infectious passion for tea and their extensive knowledge of the growing regions, growers, and manufacturers. As well as discussing the most important tea origins, they highlight some of the personalities and industry specialists they have met on their tea journey and whose insights help us understand the day-to-day work of tea gardens and factories. The book also includes invaluable advice on brewing and tasting tea, and the section on tea and gastronomy offers some absolutely stunning recipes for cooking with tea.
An updated edition of the "World's Best Tea Book" acclaimed by the 2014 World Tea Awards.
This widely praised bestseller has been updated to incorporate the changing tastes of tea drinkers, developments in production, the impact of climate change and an expanded and more highly developed tea market. This third edition improves Tea with this revised and extended content plus new photographs.
TeaTime Magazine called Tea "the reference work we've been waiting for", noting its value to students. Library Journal praised it as a "definitive guide to tea (that) will appeal to die-hard tea enthusiasts." Tea House Times found it…
I fell into the world of tea by chance in the 1980s when I gave up a career in higher education to open a 1930s style tearoom in southwest London. I grew up in the 1950s in a typical British family that drank tea throughout the day but little did I know, as I baked endless supplies of scones and cakes for the tearoom at 4 am every day, that I would end up writing books and magazine articles, editing a tea magazine for the UK Tea Council, speaking at world tea conferences, training staff in hotels, travelling to almost every major tea producing country, and eventually working today as Director of Studies at the UK Tea Academy.
John Griffiths has a talent for bringing history to life so that we are carried along by his storytelling and fluid narrative. We imagine ourselves right there with the characters he describes – the British East India Company and their opium trade with China; the spies and adventurers who brought tales of tea to the west; the merchants who encouraged the trade; and the botanists, politicians, government officials and pioneers planters who risked so much to establish the tea industry in India. Griffiths immerses us is every aspect of the business from its 16th-century beginnings to the famous companies of the 20th century, and along the way, dips into all that lies behind the story of success. Enlightening and fascinating!
Tea is a phenomenon that has changed the attitudes of one nation to another, exposed divisions of class and race, ossified social behaviour, shaped the ethics of business, influenced relations between management and labour and led to significant advances in medicine. "Tea" is a comprehensive study of a drink that is imbibed daily by over half the population of the world, looking at the phenomenon as well as the commodity - from 2,500 AD to the present day. Following on from the success of books such as Cod, Tobacco and Salt, "Tea" takes a well-researched and fascinating approach to the…
I fell into the world of tea by chance in the 1980s when I gave up a career in higher education to open a 1930s style tearoom in southwest London. I grew up in the 1950s in a typical British family that drank tea throughout the day but little did I know, as I baked endless supplies of scones and cakes for the tearoom at 4 am every day, that I would end up writing books and magazine articles, editing a tea magazine for the UK Tea Council, speaking at world tea conferences, training staff in hotels, travelling to almost every major tea producing country, and eventually working today as Director of Studies at the UK Tea Academy.
This hefty tome is a dream book for anyone fascinated, as I am, by the ancient trade road, dating back to the 7th century AD and stretching over 1000 miles, along which tea was carried on the backs of pack animals from southwest China up to Lhasa, where it was traded for Tibetan ponies. Freeman’s wonderful photographs and Ahmad’s text capture and explain the life of the villagers in the famous tea mountains of southern Yunnan, where tea trees live up to 3,000 years; the rituals of the Buddhist priests in their temples; the different ethnic peoples that live in the remote regions along the road; the ceremonies that take place to honour the ancient tea trees, and views of the landscape where rivers wind, yaks graze, and life revolves around tea.
One of the longest and most dramatic trade routes of the ancient world, the Tea Horse Road carried a crucial exchange for 13 centuries between China and Tibet. China needed war horses to protect its northern frontier and Tibet could supply them. When the Tibetans discovered tea in the 7th century, it became a staple of their diet, but its origins are in southwest China, and they had to trade for it.
The result was a network of trails covering more than 3,000 kilometers through forests, gorges and high passes onto the Himalayan plateaus, traversed by horse, mule and yak…
I fell into the world of tea by chance in the 1980s when I gave up a career in higher education to open a 1930s style tearoom in southwest London. I grew up in the 1950s in a typical British family that drank tea throughout the day but little did I know, as I baked endless supplies of scones and cakes for the tearoom at 4 am every day, that I would end up writing books and magazine articles, editing a tea magazine for the UK Tea Council, speaking at world tea conferences, training staff in hotels, travelling to almost every major tea producing country, and eventually working today as Director of Studies at the UK Tea Academy.
The story of Britain’s tearooms is often thought to have begun in London but it was Stuart Cranston and his sister Kate in Glasgow who were responsible for opening Scotland’s first public tearooms. This lovely book explores the very beginnings when Stuart Cranston’s decided to install a few tables and chairs at his tea retail store in 1875 so that customers could taste teas before buying. Kate followed suit but added her own distinctive style by employing Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife to design the now world-famous Willow Tea Rooms. The charming story links inextricably with tea, Glasgow, art, design and business and, since the original Willow on Sauchiehall Street has now been totally renovated and refurbished in Mackintosh style, Kinchin’s book is particularly valuable.
In 1896, Kate Cranston, the pioneer of Glasgow tea rooms in the late nineteenth century, commissioned Charles Rennie Mackintoshwho would become one of the Western worlds most renowned designersto design her tea rooms, and over the next two decades he did so with dazzling inventiveness. (Mackintoshs wife, Margaret, herself an artist, also made important contributions to the interior designs.) Cranston and Mackintosh opened up a unique, avant-garde artistic world to thousands of ordinary people and their tea rooms became internationally famous. Taking Tea with Mackintosh illustrates their exciting collaboration with black-and-white historical photographs of the tea rooms and color photographs…
As a teenager, I worked on cars and motorcycles in my spare time while apprenticing in an architectural millwork shop, paneling the homes of the rich and famous. Thus I discovered the great joys and satisfactions of working with my hands. After a long stint in graduate school, then four years as an editor at Fine Woodworking magazine and for Taunton Press books, I opened a custom design furniture business in 2000. Travel, writing, and reading are aligned passions, and I’ve lived, taught English, and woodworking here and abroad in France, Slovakia, India, and Japan.
They say that travel opens the mind in ways that staying home doesn’t. Books can take you places you can’t otherwise go. So with Yanagi, I got to visit the mind of an early 20th-century Japanese craft connoisseur who looked at thousand-year-old (plain and unassuming) tea bowls and wondered why they’re utterly beautiful and treasured (the best fetch huge sums at auctions–$25million recently for one). Yanagi’s exploration of how the hands of craftsmen can unknowingly and unintentionally create objects of great beauty was both fascinating as it was challenging. It made my shop work a hundred times more enjoyable.
craftsman working in a set tradition for a lifetime? What is the value of handwork? Why should even the roughly lacquered rice bowl of a Japanese farmer be thought beautiful? The late Soetsu Yanagi was the first to fully explore the traditional Japanese appreciation for objects born, not made.' Mr. Yanagi sees folk art as a manifestation of the essential world from which art, philosophy, and religion arise and in which the barriers between them disappear. The implications of the author's ideas are both far-reaching and practical. Soetsu Yanagi is often'
As a child my heroes were designers and I thought designers could design across many disciplines, this was what I understood and aspired to. I'm fortunate to have been a designer, illustrator, and design teacher for many years. Passionate about the process I firmly believe if you can design in one area you can design in another. Understanding your material's potential is the key. As a tutor and author my job is to unwrap a student’s talent, support and encourage that unique view through skills building and advice to help them. I believe good design can solve many of the world’s problems and passing on that message is valuable.
An exploration by this famous novelist contrasts the Japanese and the west’s approach to what it means to dwell and inhabit. Light, texture, and culture are explored from an aesthetic point of view and as a design choice through various explorations of sensory experience be that of food, traditional Japanese toilets, or the impact of electric light. An evocative and practical essay for anyone interested in the way we inhabit our environments. This book was a powerful reminder that cultural differences and the history behind them need to be understood and welcomed for the contrast and the alternative view they reveal.
An essay on aesthetics by the Japanese novelist, this book explores architecture, jade, food, and even toilets, combining an acute sense of the use of space in buildings. The book also includes descriptions of laquerware under candlelight and women in the darkness of the house of pleasure.
I've spent the last three decades thinking about Japanese aesthetics, and in particular if and how they can be meaningfully used beyond Japan. I'm the author of several books on the subject: Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan, Place Time and Being in Japanese Architecture, This Here Now: Japanese Building and the Architecture of the Individual, and most recently, The Constructed Other: Japanese Architecture in the Western Mind. I teach about Asian Pacific architecture at the University of Hawai'i, Mānoa.
This book was far ahead of its time inexplaining the active manipulation of space and time in traditional Japanese gardens, from the diminutive tsuboniwa courtyard gardens that transported the city dweller to the heart of the wilderness, to the temple gardens that procured remote features of the natural landscape.
I've spent the last three decades thinking about Japanese aesthetics, and in particular if and how they can be meaningfully used beyond Japan. I'm the author of several books on the subject: Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan, Place Time and Being in Japanese Architecture, This Here Now: Japanese Building and the Architecture of the Individual, and most recently, The Constructed Other: Japanese Architecture in the Western Mind. I teach about Asian Pacific architecture at the University of Hawai'i, Mānoa.
This beautifully illustrated book is difficult to find now. The images effectively speak for themselves, however, and make up for the inevitable shortcomings of even the most informed attempts to sum up these concepts verbally.
As a well-traveled writer who has lived around the world, I’ve visited a tea salon in almost every city I visit. My favorite places are small communities filled with old-timers and well-wrought customs. Our lives are very fast-paced, and books that celebrate slowing down and a simpler life will always be a draw for me. Since I’m primarily a fiction writer, I also like a little mystery and tension in these otherwise idyllic little towns, not to mention the occasional scone and cup of tea.
With the advent of food trucks, I can’t think of anything more charming or lovely than a tea shop that hits the road, and in a bright pink van, no less. Raisin’s writing goes straight to the point–we’re on the road with Rosie in no time, and it’s a journey you won’t want to miss.
A swanky job as a Michelin-starred Sous Chef, a loving husband and future children scheduled for an exact date.
That's until she comes home one day to find her husband's pre-packed bag and a confession that he's had an affair.
Heartbroken and devastated, Rosie drowns her sorrows in a glass (or three) of wine, only to discover the following morning that she has spontaneously invested in a bright pink campervan to facilitate her grand plans to travel the country.
As a well-traveled writer who has lived around the world, I’ve visited a tea salon in almost every city I visit. My favorite places are small communities filled with old-timers and well-wrought customs. Our lives are very fast-paced, and books that celebrate slowing down and a simpler life will always be a draw for me. Since I’m primarily a fiction writer, I also like a little mystery and tension in these otherwise idyllic little towns, not to mention the occasional scone and cup of tea.
While this isn’t a novel about tea or tea salons, it’s a great primer on all things tea related. Fortnum & Mason has been in the tea business since 1707, and their expertise will help you brew the perfect pot of tea to pair with your favorite tea salon novel.
Time for Tea is a celebration of Fortnum's passion for tea in its every form. Drawing on over 300 years of experience, you will find the history, geography, seasonality of tea - everything from leaf to cup - as well as 50 delicious recipes.
Fortnum & Mason has nearly as much experience of selling tea as Britain has of drinking it - some three centuries' worth, in fact, since the early eighteenth century.
This fun and deeply authoritative guide whisks you through all the information you need to get the most out of your cuppa. It instructs on how to…
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