Re: American tea-service and the home economics schools?
Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2021 4:01 pm
An article from a 1915 academic journal in Home Economics, during the transition period into a general public interest magazine like the Seven Sisters magazines.
Lots of interesting bits in this one... "Thé dansant" was the "tea dance", a practice also popular in England, but that I am unfamiliar with in regards to tea. A surprise for me is that they were apparently reading translations of Lu Yu in the home economics schools. Mixed green and black tea is seen as old-fashioned, while Ceylon tea is promoted. (Formosa oolong is not given the dismissive treatment of green-black blends, however.) "Russian tea" (Ceylon with lemon) is seen as excellent hot or iced, and the tea-kettle shaped tea-ball seen as a fun novelty (just as it was in 2015 ). However, again there is a mention of tea served with cream, which today is mostly associated with the East Frisian style of tea from Germany.
I suspect that the poem was an original invention of the author, who seemed to also be a poet. It is still interesting to me that the steep time for what is clearly Chinese tea is so short; what size was the pot, I wonder?
Lots of interesting bits in this one... "Thé dansant" was the "tea dance", a practice also popular in England, but that I am unfamiliar with in regards to tea. A surprise for me is that they were apparently reading translations of Lu Yu in the home economics schools. Mixed green and black tea is seen as old-fashioned, while Ceylon tea is promoted. (Formosa oolong is not given the dismissive treatment of green-black blends, however.) "Russian tea" (Ceylon with lemon) is seen as excellent hot or iced, and the tea-kettle shaped tea-ball seen as a fun novelty (just as it was in 2015 ). However, again there is a mention of tea served with cream, which today is mostly associated with the East Frisian style of tea from Germany.
I suspect that the poem was an original invention of the author, who seemed to also be a poet. It is still interesting to me that the steep time for what is clearly Chinese tea is so short; what size was the pot, I wonder?