Tag: Vintage
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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…
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The Peacock
“The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!” wrote Charles Darwin in 1860. Darwin, along with other naturalists of his times, had theorized that the broad diversification in bird coloration evolved as a function of sexual selection. But the peacock took it to such extreme that…
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The Horses of Saint Mark
The tales of the horses of Saint Mark are, unfortunately, naught but tales of theft and robbery. The Saint A local cobbler, Anianus, was sitting as usual by the sea when Mark approached, for his sandal straps had come loose. While Anianus was mending the sandals, the awl slipped and pierced his palm. As he…
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