I am interested in exploring the mind-body-spirit connection through the use of tea. For this project I explored how to perform a tea ritual called Tasseography. This is a tea ritual which one clears their mind while drinking the tea, rotates the cup three times, and then flips the cup upside down onto the saucer. Then once flipped back over, they read the symbols made by the tea leaves left behind in the cup. This allows the reader to reach into their subconscious. The idea that you can see symbols in a cup of tea to help us understand our subconscious is such an interesting idea; the reader controls the outcome of the readings. Whoever is reading the cup will see one thing but to another person could see a whole different symbol or could mean something else to them.
To begin my project I decided to do at least three tea reading rituals a day: morning, lunch, and dinner. I ended up collecting about 16 tea readings. In a small saddle stitch book, made for the readings, I took pictures of how each cup looked with all the tea symbols inside, documented the symbols, the meanings, and what type of tea was used for each tea reading. I had in mind a set of cups that could have a word that would put me into that mood, for example: a cup of relaxation, a cup of awesomeness, etc. I went back to the photos that I had taken and started to look at how they could be applied to these ceramic cups that I had thrown. I started to create really interesting designs with my tea reading photos over top the photos of my cups by drawing little lines that would represent the tea leafs. I decided to throw my own set of seven teacups that would make the loose leaf tea leaves form a patterns of tea leafs to start to hint about growth and development over time. I did this by adding a spiral indent to the cups form while it was wet on the wheel. At first I tried to carve the spiral inside the cup but it was is rough looking and people responded to the smooth gradual form change. Once I had the form of the cups and saucers made and bisque, I projected my photos of my tea readings onto them. With a pencil I traced the image and them filled it in with iron oxide wash hash marks. On the bottom of each cup has a word that would serve as a final reminder to clear your mind and to get into a peaceful state of mind before doing your readings. They all were glazed with 1234 celadon which should turn a transparent blue-green and the iron oxide wash would turn a black-brown color. When I unloaded the glaze kiln, the cups and saucers came out a weird color, not the color I was expecting and the hash marks did not show up at all. With quick thinking and help from a graduate ceramic student we came up with an idea of how to get the hash marks back onto the cup. The solution was to re-project, re-trace, and re-do the mark but this time with black luster. Then to make the luster stick to the ceramic piece I had to fire the cups and saucers a third time at cone 015. For the display, I made a 36-inches long 5.5-inches deep shelf with individual slots for each cup to sit in. On the front part of each slot is a hand painted word that is the same as the word on the bottom of that cup in that slot.