The bone-dry teapot and cups still waiting, as if holding a story yet to be told. The tea set idea emerged from the story of a Yemeni translator, Omar Bahabri, which led me to delve deeper into the history of beverages, particularly tea. I was already familiar with the history of coffee, its origins in Ethiopia, its early cultivation and consumption in Yemen, and its spread along pilgrimage routes to Mecca, then through Muslim traders to Turkey, and onward to Italy and the rest of Europe. However, tea carries a different, more complex, and more painful history.
In Yemen, tea exists in multiple forms: Adeni tea, influenced by Indian chai, and red/ black tea in the Turkish style. This diversity reflects Yemen’s social fabric, shaped by non Arab communities of Indian, African, and Turkish origin who have both contributed to and been shaped by Yemeni culture, particularly its cuisine. Yet, despite this richness, my focus is not on tea in Yemen. Although the idea began with Omar’s story, I instead return to tea’s original homeland, China, where the narrative unfolds differently.
In its early history, tea in China was a simple drink associated with medicine and daily ritual. By the 17th century, however, it had transformed into a globally desired commodity, particularly after being embraced by Britain, where it became central to social life. As demand grew rapidly, Britain faced a significant economic imbalance. It was importing vast quantities of tea from China without having sufficient goods to offer in return.
To resolve this imbalance, Britain turned to the opium trade, cultivating opium in India and exporting it to China on a massive scale. Opium became a tool of domination. Its spread led to widespread addiction across Chinese society, causing profound social and economic harm. In response, the Chinese state attempted to halt the crisis. The official Lin Zexu confiscated and destroyed large quantities of opium in an effort to protect the population. This act became the spark that ignited the First Opium War from 1839 to 1842. Britain with its superior naval and military defeated China and imposed the Treaty of Nanking. This marked the beginning of a period of political and economic subjugation. Chinese ports were forcibly opened to foreign trade, heavy reparations were imposed and Hong Kong was ceded to Britain.
In the Second Opium War from 1856 to 1860, Britain and France launched another campaign against China, advancing as far as Beijing and burning the Old Summer Palace, one of the country’s most significant cultural landmarks. China was then forced into further agreements that expanded foreign influence, legalised the opium trade, and granted extensive privileges to foreigners within its borders. These events deepened the weakening of the state, eroded economic control, and contributed to the eventual fall of the Qing dynasty.
This era is known in Chinese history as the Century of Humiliation, a period marked by repeated foreign intervention, internal fragmentation, and a profound loss of sovereignty. The impact of these wars was not only immediate but long lasting, shaping modern China’s political consciousness and its complex relationship with the West. In this context, tea is no longer just a drink. It becomes an entry point into a layered history of colonialism and coerced trade. A simple cup of tea conceals networks of power, economics, and violence, where demand alone was enough to ignite wars and reshape nations.
For this reason, I chose opium as the motif to be carried on the teapot and cups, so I experimented with pen and watercolour, searching for a visual language capable of expressing this narrative.
Then I realised that my project required a deeper level of research, which led me to visit the Victoria Gallery and Museum. As a space I’m already familiar with, particularly for its ceramics and china collection, it offered both a point of return and a site for re-reading objects through a more critical lens.
Upon entering the gallery, I experienced an immediate sense of recognition, I was drawn to the Willow pattern. Its storytelling operates as a form of visual fiction circulated, repeated, and widely accepted, yet detached from its cultural origins. The blue and white aesthetic, often perceived as timeless and decorative, began to reveal itself instead as a coded visual language shaped by histories of translation, imitation, and appropriation.
This encounter also sharpened my awareness of Liverpool’s historical entanglement with colonial trade. The city’s material culture cannot be separated from these conditions.. I became particularly interested in the development of transfer printing the process that enabled the mass reproduction of ceramic which was pioneered locally at the Herculaneum Pottery.
Extending this research, I visited few antique shops, observing ceramic objects more closely in terms of form, surface, and wear. These encounters grounded my understanding of how such objects exist not only as historical artefacts but also as carriers of layered narratives. I documented these visits through photographs and began a series of blue pen drawings as an initial visual response, testing how line, repetition, and colour might translate into my own practice.
I’m drawn to the seed capsule as a central motif, the origin of opium, and a form that holds both fragility and consequence. Its presence operates quietly, yet it carries a dense network of associations: trade, addiction, control, and empire… It functions as a more precise and restrained symbol, resisting overt representation while still holding critical weight. The decision to work with blue and white visual language reinforces this tension between surface beauty and underlying histories.
At this stage, I feel prepared to begin planning my final design. What feels significant is how this research, which initially seemed distant and external, has gradually folded back into both local history and my own practice. During my BA, I used a teapot for assembled sculpture featuring a Willow pattern titled Gossip. Revisiting this work now, it reads differently, less as a formal exploration and more as an early, intuitive engagement with themes of narrative, circulation, and miscommunication.
This process has also deepened my awareness of the responsibility embedded in design choices. Selecting what imagery appears on the tea set is not merely aesthetic, it’s conceptual and political. The act of placing an image becomes an act of framing meaning. I think of this as similar to cutting beetroot: the more carefully and precisely it’s handled, the more it stains.. The mark is unavoidable, just as histories do!
Karema 