Tag: Vintage
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Bronze
The Bronze Age, which succeeded the Stone Age, marks our discovery in the crafting of bronze, an alloy of copper and tin that is far harder and more durable than each metal alone. Not only notable in the advancement of metalwork, but the Bronze Age is considered the golden age of civilization, as numerous other…
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The Courtesan
In Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, Odysseus told of the Lotus-eaters, the Lotophagi race who lived on an island off the coast of Tunisia. On this island were full of lotus trees. “Whosoever of them ate of the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus, had no longer any wish to bring back word or to return,…
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Lapis Lazuli
More than four millennia ago, the high priestess Enheduanna, daughter to the Akkadian King Sargon, wrote in Ezagin, the House of Lapis Lazuli: “O Ezagin, house of lapis lazuli, bright like the stars of heaven, welcoming shrine in Eresh! All primeval lords look up to you every month. The great Nanigbal, Nisaba, brought down divine…
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The Spice Trail
In this legendary tale of the Wedding of Andromache and Hektor, the Greek poet Sappho wrote of “myrrh and cassia and frankincense rode on the wind” to perfume the streets of Troy. As early as the 7th century BC, Far Eastern spices had already found their way to ancient Greece. For centuries, Arab merchants controlled…
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Porcelain
The word “porcelain” appeared some time during Middle Age Europe. At first it seemed to have been applied to rare pieces of artistry in carved shell or mother-of-pearl, because their white pearly surface recalled the sheen of the cowrie or Venus-shell, called by the Italians “Porcellana.” When Marco Polo published his account of China in…
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The Tea Route
Between the 1850s and 1870s, the clipper ships were the marvel darlings of the maritime trade route that brought tea from China to Britain. From the port of Canton, these magnificent vessels traveled over 16 thousand miles, crossing the Indian Ocean toward Cape of Good Hope on South Africa’s southern tip before heading north along…
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The Heavenly Steed
More than two millennia ago, the Han people knew of the Horse of Heaven from far to the west of China. It came from Ta Yuan, ancient Ferghana, the Chinese equivalent for a local name for Greeks or Ionians, “Yavan”, which was described by Zhang Qian, China’s pioneer in Western Asia, as a land where…
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The Silk Road
It is said that almost five thousand years ago, while sitting in the shade of a mulberry tree in her garden, the Empress Hsi Ling-Shi found a fallen cocoon in her teacup. The cocoon softened in the hot tea and unraveled into a long, lustrous thread, thus beginning the invention of the silk loom and…
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Food is Home
“A woman is like a tea bag – you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.”– Eleanor Roosevelt High up in the Bohea Mountains of China, farmers cut terraces into limestone crags and built dikes and drains in order to grow tea. Endowed with fertile soil and a mild,…
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Food is Art
The Last SupperPainted in 1498, Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper has been described as “one of the greatest manifestations of intellectual power in art,” the most literary of all great pictures. The painting interweaves powerful telling of the gospel story and visual techniques which illustrate the artist’s mastery. It tells the Bible story of…
