Beyond the Teacup: 18th Century Sino-British Tea Trade and Design Cultural Exchange

This book focuses on tea-ware design exchanges between China and the UK since the middle of 17th Century, and explores how design encouraged trade and how the market demand influenced the development of design. The spirit of Chinese tea came to Britain alone with tea itself, and enriched the design of tea-ware, as well as British tea culture. During this process, tea-related oriental aesthetics evolved into an aesthetic image mechanism and developed as aesthetic concept, which infiltrated from private space to social space.