Ya-Ya’s Tea-Board

Lately, I’ve been experimenting with product presentation. While nothing can replace tasting a tea before you purchase a reasonable amount or take a teapot into your hands and feel it, this isn’t really anything you can do when purchasing tea and teaware online. If you live in Christchurch, you’re always welcome to swing by and I’m happy to share a cup of tea (or two) with you. But what if you don’t come through Christchurch any time in the foreseeable future? Well, you kind of have to rely on the photos I put up on our website.

Realizing that it’s hard to judge the size of a (usually very small) Yixing teapot, I’ve started including a lighter in my photos recently to give you a better idea of the actual size of the tea pot. This helps to a degree, but it’s difficult to get a good impression of an inherently three-dimensional object like a teapot in a two-dimensional photo. I’ve long thought that presenting things like teapots in 3D would be the bee’s knees!

Well, the time that such a thing is possible isn’t too far off, I think. Below the fold, you will find a few examples of actual teapots that we sell in magnificent 3D. Granted, the models aren’t perfect (yet), but they’re pretty amazing, you have to admit!

Teaware | 2 Comments »

NZ Post promises to deliver parcels in time for Christmas if they are sent with parcel post fast by tomorrow.

I thought I’d give you a short overview of a few of our new arrivals in the teaware section (they aren’t on the official teaware page yet) and some other recommendations.

Note: Click on the pictures for a more detailed view.

Tea Trays:

Small Tea Tray Cha, $36.90

Small Bamboo Tea Tray, $56.70

Octagonal Bamboo Tea Tray, $88.40

Large Bamboo Tea Tray, $170.00

Yixing Tea Pots:

Yixing Teapot Ginko, $60.00

Yixing Teapot Aromatic, $60.00

Yixing Teapot Multi-Coloured, $65.00

Yixing Teapot Squirrels, $87.00

Yixing Teapot Nuts, $50.00

Large Yixing Teapot Pumpkin, $105.00

Yixing Teapot 12 Birthday Animals, $55.00

Also, we’ve just received new stock of Zealong ‘Pure’ and ‘Aromatic’ which were harvested during our visit to the Zealong Estate in Hamilton in early November!

That should be enough to get your mind working. If you want to order anything last minute, you must get in touch with me today!

Thanks and stay safe over the holidays.

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Just a very quick update on new stock that’s available now (well, tomorrow, after I’ve picked up the packages from the port in Lyttelton).

To make it possible to order the new tea pots and tea trays (yes, we finally have these back in stock!) just in time for Christmas, I’ve just uploaded photos, a short description and prices on our facebook page. All in all, there are 18 new Yixing teapots and 7 new tea trays to choose from. Eventually, I’ll put better photos and more details on our website, but the facebook page should give you a pretty good idea what’s there.
If you would like to order one of these in time for Christmas, please get in touch ASAP so that we can sort out the shipping.

I’m planning to write another blog post before Christmas, so there won’t be any “Merry Christmas” quite yet…

UPDATE:

I’ve just added a whole lot of other teaware, mainly cups and whole tea sets, on our facebook page.

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I’ve been pretty busy in the last couple of weeks since my return from the Zealong plantation, and today’s post won’t be a long one, but I wanted to share some exciting news with you.

To start with, I would like to announce the imminent arrival of a new shipment of teapots from China’s famous pottery city - Yixing. The shipment includes the tea pots pictured in the title photo of this post, as well as about 20 other different designs. The cargo is scheduled to land on Saturday in Auckland and is expected around 12 Dec here in Christchurch - just in time for Christmas! With this shipment, there will also be a number of different tea trays. Many people have asked in the past for these and the original stock we had sold out pretty quickly - back in the teahouse days.

The other big news is that we now have a page on Facebook for the teahouse. You might have seen the Facebook Like box on the right. Our Facebook page is going to be the outlet to share short(er) bits of information, fast. For this blog, I usually take some time to write posts that require quite a bit of work, but I’m using Facebook for quicker updates. I also am planning to run discount campaigns on Facebook for our ‘fans’, so why don’t you head over and ‘like’ us. I would also love to see Facebook opening the way for an exchange between Ya-Ya and our friends and customers in an informal way.

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I took the opportunity of  a long weekend (Canterbury day last Friday) to go on a research trip into tea cultivation (and culture) in New Zealand. I’m currently working on a magazine article on the subject with a photographer friend of mine and we visited some important people that play a role in New Zealand’s tea history. I will write more about this subject here in due time, but I wanted to quickly share some of the photos I (the photography amateur in the team) took of our visit at the Zealong plantation just outside of Hamilton. I have written about Zealong’s wonderful oolongs before on this blog (see the article here).

Travel | 3 Comments »