Do you own a teapot? Have you ever used a teapot? (Is another anti teabag rant approaching?) Have you ever wondered why all the tea leaves don’t end up inside your cup? Have you ever looked inside a teapot? There may be a filtration device between the pot and the spout. In British culture this was, no, is a rose, just like the sprinkling attachment to a garden watering can.
In its finest form it consists of a hollow hemisphere of clay pierced with many tiny holes which allow the passage of tea (liquid) but not the passage of tea (leaves) through the spout into your cup (let’s save the mug issue until later).
However, if you investigate the interior of a younger teapot, there may well be no rose (I say, I say, my pot’s got no rose...) nor any attempt at filtration as the pot will have been designed for teabags, which are as unlikely to pass through the spout of a teapot as a camel etc.
In my early days of tea drinking (1950s) one did not expect to be able to drink to the bottom of the cup as small fragments of tea leaf would lurk there. Fastidious folk would employ a tea strainer (an implement rather than a domestic servant) to provide further elegance to the tea experience.
These marvellously utilitarian devices (avoiding grouts, in the vernacular of Tony Hancock, and the need for a slop bowl) can also be things of beauty. Whether ceramic, silver, plate, chrome, stainless steel or bamboo or superbly (and expensively) hand-woven copper wire, the aesthetic of the tea strainer is twofold: a more pleasant cup of tea and another aesthetic utensil (even some plastic ones had their charm).
You can find Alex Fraser at East Teas, Borough Market, London, on Fridays and Saturdays. www.eastteas.com.
