Tea chest. Japan, early 20th century. Wood, exterior paper decoration, tin lining. Private Collection. Photo courtesy of Fowler Museum at UCLA

Starting tomorrow and running through November 29th, the Fowler Museum at UCLA will be presenting Steeped in History: The Art of Tea.

The exhibit features art from Asia, Europe and America. Pieces on display include paintings, tea paraphernalia, rare ceramics and prints.  Focus is not only on the items and their beauty, but much upon the politics and history surrounding tea. This comes as little surprise, as Steeped in History: The Art of Tea is guest curated by Beatrice Hohenegger, author of Liquid Jade: The Story of Tea from East to West

Tea bowl, Qingbai ware. China, Northern Song dynasty, 1050-1100. Porcelain, blue-green glaze. On loan, Asian Art Museum, The Avery Brundage Collection. Photo courtesy of Fowler Museum at UCLA

Related events going on at the Fowler Museum look just as exciting as the exhibit. Food demonstrations, tea ceremonies and LA tea tours are all on the schedule of programs planned for August through November. “Kids in the Courtyard” activities look like fun for both children and adults. In September there will be lectures from, among others, Beatrice Hohenegger herself. More information on these programs can be found at the news link found here. I wish I lived in LA – the envy is killing me! Be sure to make my envy worse and go see Steeped in History: The Art of Tea starting tomorrow!

My presentation will be on tea (duh) – focusing on why it’s my personal beverage of choice and giving a bit of a crash course in tea basics. You can read a bit more about it here.

Earthbound Tea has made a fantastic offer to Ignite Baltimore attendees! If you’re interested in receiving a free sample of tea, email me at bejoyed[at]yahoo[dot]com with your name and mailing address.

The offer is good from now until July 1st, so please be in touch soon if you are interested. Also, please mention “Ignite Baltimore” in the subject line of the email, so I don’t miss you!

Getting nervous and excited – looking forward to Ignite tonight!

Update: watch the YouTube video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlb844JVsQY

According to the site, “Rare Brew is an online tea-lover’s community and shop designed to connect visitor with local & international tea experts and online reviews of tea from around the world.” Even more amazing is this: “In the course of 54 hours, a concept for an online tea community has gone from ideation to full launch – the blogs our up, our logo is polished, and tea is ready to ship to our customers’ doors. All in all, we couldn’t have asked for a better group of team members, facilitators and sponors to help us launch Rarebrew.com.”

I’ve just signed up, and look forward to seeing if the site’s functionality and content will make this tea community truly unique to others – so far so good. Something new to what I’ve experienced on other sites – users can create personal “blogs” on the site (powered by WordPress within the site – all blog URLs start with www.rarebrew.com – hello link-juice!) to write about different topics, and members can communicate publicly via “wires”, which are similar to “walls” on other social networks.

The site also features a “World Tea Experience. A Tea of the Month Program” You can learn more about this program by clicking the link here . Interesting  attempt to monetize content. The potential for success is there, if the site can both gain the readership and insure the tea of the month is alluring to both novices and enthusiasts.

Outside of some typos and a small glitch here and there (example – according to the site I joined the site 1 years, 12 months ago) it’s an interesting site.  More over, as a part of the Baltimore tech community, I continue to be impressed by local “tech savvy” groups like “Startup Weekend” encouraging members of their communities to get together to create unique ventures of their own.

Ps. My username at www.rarebrew.com is AJ Schwarz, if you’d like to follow.

Pps. Safe time to plug my upcoming presentation on Tea at Ignite Baltimore #3? I thought so too…

The sight of the box alone sent me into shock. There it was – what I really wanted for my birthday but had never dared tell him. How did he know of its existence? Where in the world did he get it? How did he become a mind reader?

But there it was. The lovely corrugated cardboard box wrapped in rope that could only be holding one thing…my very own Sorapot.

It is a weighty pot in brushed silver. A thing of beauty on it’s own, but far more beautiful with tealeaves in it. A bit clumsy to use in terms of opening and closing, but honestly worth the bit of extra effort not to pinch your fingers in it. The first pour was a bit awkward, since I’m used to pouring slowly – it needs to be thoroughly tipped in order to pour correctly. But once I got the hang of it I was golden.

We don’t have a display cabinet in our house. This teapot may be a game changer in that regard. Will this be the Wagenfeld Teapot of my generation? So far, loving my Sorapot…and feeling quite a bit spoiled for my birthday!

Representatives from the coffee, craft beer and liquor industries were there, but I think tea had the strongest showing. Tavalon Tea had a huge presence, with a large booth, lots of product for purchase as well as sampling, as well as their own DJ. As I came through the doors I was delighted to see Chris Cason (Tea Sommelier and fellow former Adagio Teas “Tea Expert”) giving a presentation on Tea Cocktails. He tells me that Tavalon’s teas are now available in Bloomingdale’s through the New York Metro area. I couldn’t be more thrilled for Tavalon’s success…his version of a Hot Toddy isn’t that bad either!

Upon turning the corner from Tavalon’s space in the venue, the entrance to the main exhibit hall was flanked by a Verizon Vios booth (with mug give-aways, of course), and a Starbucks display. The Starbucks booth was relatively empty, but there were people in barista outfits giving out samples of their Pike’s Place roast coffee.

My feeling on this? A couple of years ago I attended Extreme Beer Fest up in Boston MA. I was kind of surprised that Samuel Adams was in attendance, and more stunned that Jim Coch was manning their booth. Later I found out that he was on a panel discussing beer production. Sam Adams has had quite a bit of success in the industry – they were a game changer for craft beers much in the way Starbucks was for coffee. Handing out cups of coffee and calling it a day is bad show. I would have loved to have had the opportunity to hear a representative speak about growing practices or sourcing…perhaps a bit about roasting. When you have a group of people who are willing to pay to find out more about innovation in your industry, it’s better to do a bit more than hand them a cup of your house blend and call it a day.

At the other hand of this spectrum was the representation from Hancha Tea. Tea Master Yoon Hee Kim did a beautiful presentation on the Korean Powered Green Tea Ceremony – one that I was not aware has existed longer than the famed Japanese tea ceremony. She says that Korean tea drinkers are known to enjoy drinking just about anything that can be dried and steeped, which piqued my curiosity. I did a bit of exploration at the Hancha Tea booth later that afternoon and discovered their Hydrangea Tea. I look forward to their site to be up and running so I can purchase this variety – I have never tasted a tea so naturally sweet and uniquely flavored. I was completely stunned.

Great showings from SerendipiTEA (who are now opening a tearoom at their Manhasset, NY retail location), Tay Tea (hands-down most beautiful booth, decorated with huge cherry blossom branches. The tea was very good too!), Harney & Sons (thank you for the sample of the Taiping Houkui – quite lovely!), Guayaki Yerba Mate, and the Turkish Cultural Center (who did a great job in schooling me in Turkish Coffee).

An interesting product I encountered was Jada – a coffee & tea product that “Steeps in your mouth, not in your cup”. It’s essentially a tiny tea or coffee bag that you stick in your mouth and suck on. I tried the Mountain Mint.

That’s all I care to say about that.

It was also interesting to come across booths for NY Craft Beer Week (who brought two coffee beers) and Zen Green Tea Liquor. They both had samples, of which I took tiny sips in effort to not become Drinky Crow.

As much as I enjoyed the show, I debate whether it was worth traveling the distance from Baltimore to attend. I was mostly surprised by the amount of companies who chose to sponsor but who did not exhibit. It was disappointing to be lead to believe certain vendors would be there to later be told they were represented by a sample in a bag (if that). Is Coffee and Tea Festival a replacement for Tea Expo? I can say no. But if you live in New York City, enjoy coffee and tea and have some time to kill on a weekend sometime next year, I do recommend it.

Many thanks to Lindsey Goodwin (http://www.veetea.com, @LindseyAtVeeTea) who passed along her coupon code for reduced admission. You funded my sushi lunch when I got off the bus!

It’s Kevin Rose! Tim Ferriss! Jesse Jacobs of Samovar Tea Lounge! On Wired.com discussing tea! I could write more, but the article is more interesting than my recap would be.

It doesn’t get more tea and techie than this

I know this is completely lost on most of my non “tea enthusiastic” friends. They don’t understand that we’re not just drinking this stuff. We cherish our sources, and love to share information about our favorite teas and how we prepare them. We also like to tell others about experiences that aren’t so good, so they can avoid a lousy cuppa. I thought I had found my ultimate tea update crazy-place in Twitter, where I’ve been enjoying a casual back and forth with my new found tea birds. That was, until I discovered Steepster.

Steepster has an easy sign-up process, and is relatively intuitive in design. No big questions here as to where to go to update profile information, upload a picture or start “logging” teas. It’s also easy to search out different teas from various companies and suppliers via search bar, as well as explore what others have entered. What’s nice about Steepster (and what Twitter does not really support) is the ability to create a personal log, complete with pictures and reviews if you wish. Members are also given the ability to follow other tea drinkers within the site.

I’m happy to see a few familiar profiles on Steepster. I look forward to giving it more of a run past the initial “Wow, this looks pretty cool” phase. But I wonder how long the thrill will last. In terms of building an alternate “tea community”, it will be interesting to see if it will be as successful as Twitter at this point seems to be. In Steepster’s favor, the ability to log teas in short form online is pretty fantastic. It’s great for people who want to tell others what they are enjoying but don’t want to put the time into a full-time blog.

As an aside, I was disappointed that Steepster’s “Contact Us” buttons appear to be down (it’s working – my outlook on the other hand is not), and there is no “About Us” page. Would love to know more about the developers of this site, and what their goals were and are for this format. Judging from certain design elements on the site (clean, simple, “classic web 2.0″) and the vast selection of Adagio Teas which appear on Steepster that are not yet reviewed, could Adagio Teas have had a hand in the creation of the site? Please note this is 100% speculation on my part – and that I have nothing but love for Adagio (4/2 note – please see comment below from Steepster.com). Adagio Teas has developed offshoots to their retail site such as TeaMap, TeaMuse, TeaChat, TeaChef, TeaCritic and TeaV. A social network would be a natural for them.

If they are not backed by a tea company or product, and if they become successful as a tea community, I wonder how Steepster will eventually address the $100 question Twitter is dealing with right now -  whether or not to monetize, and if so how.

FYI: My Steepster user name is AJSchwarz if you’d like to follow. As always you can also follow me on Twitter @AJSchwarz.

Topix.com is a website which aggregates the news found on its many pages from stories found all across the web. It then gives its users the ability to create their own pages based on common interests, regions and the like. The site also encourages discussion on forums regarding featured stories as well as user-generated topics within the different pages.

There is a crazy amount of relatively up-to-date news on tea here! I tend to get a little overwhelmed with small print and multiple boxes packed with information, but for what it is – a site linking to as many other sites as it can – I can see why they chose to go with this kind of format.

The volume of advertising is a bit much for my taste, but I understand the desire to monetize online. I’d be out of work otherwise. To make up for all the ads, I can say I’m at least impressed by the amount of international tea news I found. Also, there really weren’t very many articles that were mistakenly aggregated and off-topic (I can’t count how many times the Texas Education Agency has appeared in my Google Alerts for tea) Tea News – Topix will be going in my bookmarks for now, and I look forward to seeing if it continues to deliver.