Ideas
There are two main ideas that stirred the course of my teapot design.
The first is the symbolism of rite.
The second is women empowerment.
Although the second idea is arguably more important, there is only so much a teapot can do. That is why I chose to focus on bringing back the rite to our everyday lives as the leading focus for my teapot's design. As you will see, a teapot is a wonderful object to help bring this about.
The first is the symbolism of rite.
The second is women empowerment.
Although the second idea is arguably more important, there is only so much a teapot can do. That is why I chose to focus on bringing back the rite to our everyday lives as the leading focus for my teapot's design. As you will see, a teapot is a wonderful object to help bring this about.
Tea drinking is possibly the single most frequently and globally performed ritual that people have kept since ancient times.
Ritual defined by Oxford dictionary:
a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order.
Source: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/ritual
Even though it is more of a common than a solemn series of actions, 'ritual' is the best word I could use to express the tea drinking experience that I wanted to create with my teapot.
"Celebration of paradox. Rites of passage embody paradox, the inevitable legacy of our humanity, vividly calling our attention to, and allowing us to announce and renounce, the most profound enigma of all: that we live out our lives suspended between the borders of nature and culture. This is the essential paradox, but other paradoxes are played out as well. Because rites of passage mark distinctions in an otherwise continuous life course, they celebrate and facilitate change or disruption of standard social categories, while at the same time they preserve them. A third paradox represented reveals the conflict between our aspirations and strivings for individual ventures, and our yearnings for assurance and sustenance from our social group. In actual physiological fact, we are born and die quite alone, unique and separate, but we also do so as members of a group, a group that seeks to preserve the continuity of its values and understandings, a group that therefore defines our birth, aging, and death and that reassures us that life is meaningful.
Hence, during the performance of these life-crisis rituals, societies may inscribe their designs both literally and figuratively upon the initiate, and in doing so, life's paradoxes are proclaimed, contemplated, and dramatized."
(Rites of Passage, An Overview, Barbara G Meyerhoff, Linda A. Camino, and Edith Turner)
Source: http://www.clal.org/j8.html
Rituals are there to help us mark the transition points in our life. The passage above ends with the word dramatized, but I believe it is not the purpose of a ritual to bring drama into one's life but just the opposite. Rituals help one to acknowledge the transience and the passing of moments in life. They enable one to acknowledge the change that happens at critical points in our life, such as marriage/puberty etc. and to accept this change.
What the aim of this teapot is, is to return the ritual to peoples' lives, for rituals are a valuable means for helping us get through the profound changes in our life and release some of the stress that those changes bring along. They help defeat our intrinsic fear of the unknown by celebrating that unknown. At the pace we are living today, everyday is sure to bring something new and unexpected and ritual, which is less present than ever, has never been needed more.
Making tea-drinking a true ritual, would be a step towards turning the perception of everyday life's ups and downs from annoyance to appreciation.
Tea is in a constant state of flux, just like a human is, just like all things in nature are. We are surrounded by things that seem to last forever, like concrete and bricks cities are made of. Tea is a perfect mediator between civilization and nature because it is first of all so easily accessible and secondly it transmits the message of a natural circulation of things so effortlessly, from it's vivid solid to liquid transformation.
It is because we can relate to tea in regards to this changing nature and see it handle it so effortleslly and joyfully, releasing beautiful scents and colours that we might be more likely eased into acknowledging and accepting our own.
How this would work (hyp)
Ritual defined by Oxford dictionary:
a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order.
Source: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/ritual
Even though it is more of a common than a solemn series of actions, 'ritual' is the best word I could use to express the tea drinking experience that I wanted to create with my teapot.
"Celebration of paradox. Rites of passage embody paradox, the inevitable legacy of our humanity, vividly calling our attention to, and allowing us to announce and renounce, the most profound enigma of all: that we live out our lives suspended between the borders of nature and culture. This is the essential paradox, but other paradoxes are played out as well. Because rites of passage mark distinctions in an otherwise continuous life course, they celebrate and facilitate change or disruption of standard social categories, while at the same time they preserve them. A third paradox represented reveals the conflict between our aspirations and strivings for individual ventures, and our yearnings for assurance and sustenance from our social group. In actual physiological fact, we are born and die quite alone, unique and separate, but we also do so as members of a group, a group that seeks to preserve the continuity of its values and understandings, a group that therefore defines our birth, aging, and death and that reassures us that life is meaningful.
Hence, during the performance of these life-crisis rituals, societies may inscribe their designs both literally and figuratively upon the initiate, and in doing so, life's paradoxes are proclaimed, contemplated, and dramatized."
(Rites of Passage, An Overview, Barbara G Meyerhoff, Linda A. Camino, and Edith Turner)
Source: http://www.clal.org/j8.html
Rituals are there to help us mark the transition points in our life. The passage above ends with the word dramatized, but I believe it is not the purpose of a ritual to bring drama into one's life but just the opposite. Rituals help one to acknowledge the transience and the passing of moments in life. They enable one to acknowledge the change that happens at critical points in our life, such as marriage/puberty etc. and to accept this change.
What the aim of this teapot is, is to return the ritual to peoples' lives, for rituals are a valuable means for helping us get through the profound changes in our life and release some of the stress that those changes bring along. They help defeat our intrinsic fear of the unknown by celebrating that unknown. At the pace we are living today, everyday is sure to bring something new and unexpected and ritual, which is less present than ever, has never been needed more.
Making tea-drinking a true ritual, would be a step towards turning the perception of everyday life's ups and downs from annoyance to appreciation.
Tea is in a constant state of flux, just like a human is, just like all things in nature are. We are surrounded by things that seem to last forever, like concrete and bricks cities are made of. Tea is a perfect mediator between civilization and nature because it is first of all so easily accessible and secondly it transmits the message of a natural circulation of things so effortlessly, from it's vivid solid to liquid transformation.
It is because we can relate to tea in regards to this changing nature and see it handle it so effortleslly and joyfully, releasing beautiful scents and colours that we might be more likely eased into acknowledging and accepting our own.
How this would work (hyp)