I'm coming out... as a tea drinker

That's right. I drink tea. Deal with it. It's just an aspect of me, not the whole of me. I'm still the same person. Don't hate.

I've been drinking coffee since I was in high school. Coffee's just always been there. By college I was drinking it black. No contaminants for me. Real people drink coffee. Or so I always thought. Besides, I loved the stuff. Ten years ago I bought a roaster and started roasting my own for crying out loud. I not only drank coffee, I understood coffee.

I saw tea people as weak and high maintenance. Coffee for me was as much a statement about who I am as it was my preferred way to get caffeine into my system. Tea people weren't in it for the caffeine I thought. And since you never really had to acquire a taste for tea, I assumed that tea drinkers were people who weren't strong enough to get over the hump and learn to like coffee.

Don't believe coffee's an acquired taste? Set a cup of black coffee in front of a kid sometime. Hilarity will ensue, I assure you.

Anyhow, all of that changed almost a year ago.

Last December I was a house guest in the lovely home of Sara Baldwin, the doyenne of American Mosaics. Sara drinks tea exclusively. It wasn't 'til we got back from dinner that she broke the news to me that there was no coffee in the house. I remained cool on the outside but I was panicking on the inside. Waking up without any coffee in the house had long been a recurring nightmare but I was a guest. I was determined to tough it out.

The next morning I walked into the kitchen and Sara was making a pot of jasmine tea. I had a cup.

It was pleasant. Really pleasant. It had caffeine in it and for that I was grateful, but more than anything the jasmine tea was pleasant tasting. I'd grown so used to shocking my system into action every morning with the murky bitterness of black coffee that it never occurred to me that I could do the same thing a little more pleasantly.

I drove home to Florida from Virginia that day. It was a 15 hour drive and the the entire way home all I could think about was that jasmine tea.

Tea is made from the new leaves of the Camellia sinensis, a warm-climate evergreen shrub that's a kind of camellia, as its Latin name suggests.

I bought some when I got home and I started drinking jasmine tea. I've never been one to do anything half way so within a week I'd installed myself at the tea shop down the street and I set about learning all about tea.

As befits a member of the camellia family, tea blooms.

Nearly 11 months later and there has to be 30 kinds of tea in my kitchen. In the mornings I like a Lapsang Souchong. In the afternoons I like a good Earl Grey or a chai with black pepper. At night I usually go for something citrus-y and without any caffeine in it. I'm hooked on the tastes, I'm hooked on the ritual and I love the whole package.

By mere happenstance I ran into someone on Twitter named Jim Shreiber. Jim's a tea merchant in Chicago and he Tweets as @JimmyDoesTea. Jim's a riot and he really knows his tea. Jim's business is named Shui Tea and his approach is two pronged. He sells tea through the store on his website and he also does in-home tea tastings in Chicago. I admire his approach to tea and since he blends his own, he knows what he's talking about.

Two weeks ago I ordered some teas from him. I ordered a blend he calls Moscow After Hours, a maté blend called Caramelo Rápido (maté is made from the leaves of an Argentinian holly tree and is a parallel obsession of mine) and a non-caffeine tea called Cherry Bomb.

Moscow After Hours is my new afternoon tea. What a complex and delightful blend it is. He starts with a blend of Lapsang Souchong and high-mountain Ceylon. He then adds bergamot, milk thistle and safflower. The bergamot gives it the he familiar ring of Earl Grey, but the milk thistle and safflower leave it with an effect that can only be described as smoky. To quote from his website, "Smoky and strong, the assertive aroma will make those around you whisper, "What on Earth are you up to?"

I mix up my afternoons with Shui Tea's Caramelo Rápido. Maté is in a league all it's own and I don't care what anybody says it has caffeine levels that dwarf tea and coffee. Two cups of maté at around 3pm leaves me hanging from the rafters. Maté by itself is a treat enough but when it's roasted and blended with a hint of caramel it's almost heaven. If you've never had maté, track some down. You won't be disappointed. On second thought, order some Caramelo Rápido from Shui Tea!

Finally, my evenings are now spent int he company of a blend called Cherry Bomb. Cherry Bomb starts out in life as Rooibos tea blended with cherry, chili, rose, safflower, peony and carrot. Those disparate flavors combine into something of such stunning complexity that caffeine's beside the point. Imagine the flavor of a lingering cherry popsicle, with just a little earthiness, the scents of peony and rose and then a chili pepper end note that kicks you in the teeth. I can't get enough of the stuff.

Oh I still drink coffee from time to time and it'll do if I'm out and don't have any of my tea supplies handy but at this point, nothing does it for me the way a nice cup of tea does.

My orders from Shui Tea arrive days after I order them and everything I've purchased has exceeded my expectations in every way. If you're curious about the world of tea, I suggest you take a quick trip through the Shui Tea store. And if you're in Chicago, set up an in-home tasting with Jim, I'd love to know what they're like.

Shui Tea's website and blog is here and you can go to the tea store directly here. Give it a try, there's a whole new way of looking at the world available through the miracle of tea.

Remember the shoe tub?

Remember the shoe tub? Here's the post in case you don't know what I'm talking about.

It was that show tub that convinced me that Sicis, the Italian mosaic company, takes a model car approach to their marketing. By that I mean that they use their mosaics in unconventional ways to get people talking about them. There's no cynicism involved int his. They spend a lot of money on these projects. Every one of them is well-designed, well-made and for sale.

So knowing that, I wasn't surprised when I found out that Sicis is designing, manufacturing and selling furniture. All of these pieces highlight an integrated mosaic and it's interesting to keep that in mind when you see these fanciful chairs.

I'm not to worked up about any of these pieces and I can't shake the thought that any furniture they sell will be gravy. I'm convinced that having me write about Sicis mosaics is the whole reason this furniture exists.

What do you guys think? Are they just a company that's into a whole bunch of stuff or are these Sicis side projects part of a marketing plan? Do you think it's effective?

Still stuck in the 60s? That may not be a bad thing

Here are a couple of bathrooms from 1960 and 1961.

You know, they're not half bad. There are some elements to them that we still do now. One of them has a separate water closet and I see more than one wall-mounted toilet. There's 1/2" mosaic tile, furniture-inspired vanities, funky wall paper that's not too funky and a floor tile in the last image that looks suspiciously like terrazzo tile. What's cool now isn't terribly off from what was cool in 1961.

See what I mean? If you have a bathroom that dates from the early '60s you might as well keep it. At this stage of the game things have come full-circle and the early '60s are fashionable again. I call it the Mad Men effect. If you can imagine Betty Draper spraying Aqua Net in the mirror, you're good for another five years at least.

People didn't really go off the deep end until the latter part of the '60s anyhow.

Again, see what I mean? Hot Dr. Pepper? I can't imagine drinking that stuff cold. If the ads are to be believed, hot Dr. Pepper was all the rage in 1969. I was four at the time so don't blame me. So if everyone was sitting around drinking hot Dr. Pepper in 1969, what on earth did a bathroom look like? Are you sure you want to know?

Ugh. See what happens when you drink hot Dr. Pepper?

I want a blanket absolution for every aesthetic choice made from 1968 through about 1984. I have no idea what got into people but mercifully, it passed. Despite the attempts to revive them by people too young to remember those years first hand, they are gone for good.

But seriously, a lot of the innovations from the mid-century era are still with us. Remember that blue bathroom from the beginning of this post?

See that sink? Here's its modern incarnation from La Cava.

Remember the toilet from from the fifth image?

Here's its modern counterpart from Duravit.

See? A lot of that stuff is still around.

Looking to recreate that nightmare from 1969? You're out of luck. That's just as well, some chapters need to remain closed.

So what do you guys think? Did the designers of the time get something right in the early '60s? Or am I just blinded by my fascination with all things Mad Men? Would you recreate one of those vintage looks in your home today? What is it about those mid-century styles that makes them look so appealing today?

This post is part of the 2010 Bathroom Blogfest, an annual blogospheric event that's been running steadily for the past five years. The participants in this year's Bathroom Blogfest are:

Blogger	Blog Name	Blog URL
Susan Abbott	Customer Experience Crossroads	http://www.customercrossroads.com/customercrossroads/
Paul Anater	Kitchen and Residential Design	http://www.KitchenAndResidentialDesign.com
Shannon Bilby	Big Bob's Outlet	http://blog.bigbobsoutlet.com/
Shannon Bilby	Carpets N More Blog	http://blog.carpetsnmore.com/
Shannon Bilby	Dolphin Carpet Blog	http://blog.dolphincarpet.com/
Shannon Bilby	From The Floors Up	http://fromthefloorsup.com/
Shannon Bilby	My Big Bob's Blog	http://blog.mybigbobs.com/
Toby Bloomberg	Diva Marketing	http://bloombergmarketing.blogs.com/bloomberg_marketing/
Laurence Borel	Blog Till You Drop	http://www.laurenceborel.com/
Bill Buyok	Avente Tile Talk Blog	http://tiletalk.blogspot.com/
Jeanne Byington	The Importance of Earnest Service	http://blog.jmbyington.com/
Becky Carroll	Customers Rock!	http://customersrock.net/
Marianna Chapman	Results Revolution	http://www.resultsrevolution.com
Katie Clark	Practial Katie	http://practicalkatie.blogspot.com/
Nora DePalma	American Standard's Professor Toilet	http://www.professortoilet.com/
Leigh Durst	LivePath Experience Architect Weblog	http://livepath.blogspot.com/
Valerie Fritz	The AwarepointBlog	http://www.awarepointblog.com/
Iris Garrott	Checking In and Checking Out	http://circulating.wordpress.com/
Tish Grier	The Constant Observer	http://spap-oop.blogspot.com
Renee LeCroy	Your Fifth Wall	http://yourfifthwall.com/
Joseph Michelli	Dr. Joseph Michelli's Blog	www.josephmichelli.com/blog
Veronika Miller	Modenus Blog	http://www.modenus.com/blog
Arpi Nalbandian	TILE Magazine Editor Blog	http://www.tilemagonline.com/Articles/Blog_Nalbandian
Maria Palma	People 2 People Service	http://www.people2peopleservice.com/
Reshma Bachwani Paritosh	The Qualitative Research Blog	http://www.onqualitativeresearch.blogspot.com/
David Polinchock	Polinchock's Ponderings	http://blog.polinchock.com/
Victoria Redshaw & Shelley Pond	Scarlet Opus Trends Blog	http://trendsblog.co.uk/
David Reich	My 2 Cents	http://reichcomm.typepad.com/my_weblog/
Sandy Renshaw	Around Des Moines	http://www.arounddesmoines.com/
Sandy Renshaw	Purple Wren	http://www.purplewren.com/
Bethany Richmond	Carpet and Rug Institute Blog	http://www.carpet-and-rug-institute-blog.com/
Bruce Sanders	RIMtailing Blog	http://rimtailing.blogspot.com/
Steve Tokar	Please Be Seated	http://stevetokar.wordpress.com/
Carolyn Townes	Becoming a Woman of Purpose	http://spiritwomen.blogspot.com/
Stephanie Weaver	Experienceology	http://experienceology.blogspot.com/
Christine B. Whittemore	Flooring The Consumer	http://flooringtheconsumer.blogspot.com/
Christine B. Whittemore	Simple Marketing Blog	http://www.simplemarketingblog.com/
Christine & Ted Whittemore	Smoke Rise & Kinnelon Blog	http://smokerise-nj.blogspot.com/
Christine B. Whittemore	The Carpetology Blog	http://carpetology.blogspot.com/
Linda Wright	LindaLoo Build Business With Better Bathrooms	http://lindaloo.com/

Autumnal re-runs: A trip to New Ravenna

This post ran originally on 8 January 2010 and it recounts a trip I took to New Ravenna Mosaics about a month prior. I ran a post this week about some new stuff New Ravenna's been working on and it reminded me again how impressed I was by my experiences as their guest last year.

via Flickr

Across the Chesapeake Bay from Annapolis, MD sits the Delmarva Peninsula, so named for the three states that divide it. There's the whole of Delaware on the eastern side. It's flanked by Maryland to the west and the bottom 70 or so miles of that spit of land make up Virginia's Eastern Shore.

via Flickr

US 13 runs down the spine of the Eastern Shore and to drive south on it is to leave behind the pace and the hassles inherent in living in the rest of the northeastern US. The miles pass wide expanses of fertile fields dotted with pine and oak flatwoods. Ocassional, orderly towns come into view and there's a Spartan efficiency to them.

It's clear that for a lot of these towns, their best years are behind them. There's no real sense of loss that's readily apparent though. History runs very deep on the Eastern Shore, and that kind of history leaves a people with the steely resolve that even though the good times are in the past, they'll come back.

About two-thirds of the way down the peninsula sits the town of Exmore, VA; and in what was once an Arrow shirt factory, New Ravenna Mosaics and Stone creates some of the most beautiful work in glass and stone available anywhere.

New Ravenna Mosaics and Stone is the largest employer in Northhampton County. The 100 people who arrive at that old shirt factory every morning are artisans in every sense of the word and their workplace is an atelier much more than something that could be called a factory.

Sara Baldwin founded New Ravenna in 1991. She started as an artist with a passionate vision to bring beauty to the world through the medium of stone tesserae. That vision still burns as brightly as ever and her enthusiasm, her love, for the medium infuses everything about New Ravenna.

While it's true that New Ravenna utilizes an impressive assortment of water jets, tumblers and wet saws; at the end of the day they create their art the way mosaicists always have. Someone considers a piece of stone, cuts it into the shape she needs and then sets it in place. Repeat 10,000 times.

19 years ago, New Ravenna started out as a woman with a vision. 19 years later, New Ravenna is 100 people with a shared vision.

Look through their entire collection on their website and follow New Ravenna's latest developments through Sara Balwin's blog. Oh, and if you ever find yourself in Exmore, VA; stop in for a visit. If you can't make it to Exmore, you can find a bit of New Ravenna's Exmore at distributors far and wide.

Autumnal re-runs: Let me off in the Bronze Age

This post appeared originally on 30 October 2009 and I'm running it again because I like talking about the Bronze Age and the Elamite people who ushered it in.

Six thousand years ago, an unknown and enterprising tradesman of the Elamite city of Susa combined copper and tin in a crucible and ushered in a new age of human development. It was the dawn of the bronze age and the Elamites were the first people to leave the stone age behind. Bronze was the first metal alloy devised by anyone, in Elam or anywhere else, and the technology to make and use it spread outward from what's now Iran and it eventually circled the globe. Its two component metals, copper and tin, almost never occur near one another and making bronze required trade with other civilizations. So ancient people found it to be not only useful, it also made them talk to their neighbors.

Bronze had a relatively low melting point, it resisted corrosion, it could be made into as many shapes as could be imagined and it was made from materials that were in ready supply in the Middle East. Bronze remained the go-to material until the beginning of the iron age, some three thousand years later. Bronze never lost its usefulness and human beings have been making and appreciating bronze for six thousand years and counting.

I can't think of a metal that feels as good as bronze does. It has a nearly velvety feel to it and that comes from the surface corrosion that results from the copper in bronze reacting to oxygen in the air. Bronze has the unique ability to stop corroding as soon as its surface has a layer of copper oxide coating it. It lasts forever and actually looks better over time.

I'm fortunate to sell a line of cabinetry hardware from Schaub and Company in Grand Rapids, MI. Schaub sells some of the finest hardware I can think of and when Tom the Schaub rep comes calling it's like Christmas. Schaub and Company approaches what they do with the care and precision of jewelers and they do a lot with bronze. Tom's visit yesterday afternoon didn't disappoint.

This is a collection called Vinci, and it features some pretty modern shapes in an ancient metal. Well sign me up. I knew I was going to love it before he even unwrapped his sample kit.

These handles and knobs come in two finishes and the handles come in five sizes. Measured center to center, the handles come in four-inch, six-inch, 12-inch, and 18-inch cabinet handle and then a chunkier 18-inch appliance handle. The knobs come in two square sizes and the entire collection is available in two finishes, antique bronze and polished white bronze.

Polished white bronze is an almost mirror finish on a roughly cast modern shape. It's sensory overload and my new favorite handle.

As if it weren't beautiful enough already, the entire Vinci collection is unlacquered and has what's called a living finish. I wrote a series on living finishes last winter in response to a reader request that I come up with a definitive answer. I came up with three definitive answers and you can read them here, here and here.

A living finish means that the surface will continue to change color with time and exposure to the elements. This takes time and it provides true character to a metal finish. Your life leaves a mark on a living finish and the idea of my leaving a mark on an inanimate, decorative object is something that appeals to me on a really basic level. It's for that same reason that I like marble counters so much. I'll take character over something that looks pristine any day and believe it or not, I kind of like my crow's feet too.

Anyhow, this new Vinci bronze collection from Schaub and Company has given me one more thing to love about their hardware. Poke around on their site, there's enough there to appeal to just about everybody.