The UK Tea Academy

Join us for a thoughtful evening exploring the tea philosophy and influence of Okakura Kakuzo.

Let us “drink tea and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things,” he wrote. “Strangely enough, humanity has so far met in a teacup.”

Presented by Bruce Richardson (Jane Pettigrew’s US tea colleague, friend, co-author and publisher of The New Tea Companion and A Social History of Tea).

Okakura scholar Bruce Richardson brings to life the fascinating story of a Japanese artist who inspired the West’s understanding of tea, art, and architecture while using the common metaphor of a teacup.

The Book of Tea was written in 1906 by Okakura Kakuzo, Asian Arts Curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The Japanese art scholar also impressed Chicago and a young architecture student named Frank Lloyd Wright with his design of the Japanese Pavilion at the city’s 1893 World Columbian Exposition. The Book of Tea was Okakura’s masterful attempt to translate the tea spirit of the East to a culture caught up in opulent materialism. Let us “drink tea and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things,” he wrote. “Strangely enough, humanity has so far met in a teacup.”

Richardson edited and expanded the 2011 Benjamin Press edition of The Book of Tea. He and his wife Shelley began their tea company, Elmwood Inn Fine Teas, based in Kentucky, thirty years ago. Bruce is Tea Master for the Boston Tea Party Museum and is a contributing editor for TeaTime magazine. He is the author of numerous books on tea and has a busy speaking schedule across North America and Asia.