Reviving History through Tea
Grace Lee
The ubiquity of tea, though convenient, comes at a cost. This tea set honors the Toda people of southern India, a tribe whose culture and lifestyle have been hugely impacted by the rising cultivation and consumption of tea throughout the course of history. As tea plantations spread and consumed grasslands, the Toda people were forced to move away from their origins as a pastoral tribe.
The Toda Tribe
Historically a pastoral people, their entire community and religion are structured around raising buffalo and making dairy products. But, as more land was taken for plantations, the buffalo population decreased and the Toda were forced to modernize and begin farming. So I wanted to create a tea set that celebrates this tribe and their culture.
The Poovarsh
This is one of their temples, called a Poovarsh, which is a storehouse for dairy products that come from their sacred buffalo. Like all their structures, it’s made with only the naturally occurring materials in their environment. I wanted to capture both the conical shape and the surrounding stone wall because it represents 2 fundamental elements of the Todas, which are their deep connection to nature and the buffalo that their community once revolved around.
The Embroidery
The color palette represents another big part of their culture, which is their embroidery. It’s such an iconic practice of theirs that the government prohibits anyone outside of the Toda people from recreating it. The vivid colors and patterns all have their own meanings, each representing parts of the Toda culture or environment. For the colors, the red represents the earth, black the underworld, and white the heavens.