A Ton of Tea: When Tea Became Art at the Royal Academy

Ai Weiwei's exhibition at the Royal Academy in London had something in it for tea drinkers specifically. One of the exhibits was exactly what it sounds like: a ton of tea. A metre-square cube of compressed Pu-erh, towering above the gallery floor.

Ai chose Pu-erh because it's the tea of ordinary Chinese life. Drunk across the country, by people in every walk of life, every day. The leaves are dried and compressed into brick form - the traditional way of preserving and transporting tea - but this block was on a scale that made something familiar feel monumental.

It's hard to stand in front of a literal ton of tea and not think about what that represents. The scale of tea consumption globally. The labour that goes into growing and processing it. The daily ritual that connects so many people across so many cultures.

Ai Weiwei has always worked with objects that carry quiet significance, and tea - for all its ordinariness - carries an enormous amount. A ton of it in a gallery makes you look at your morning cup slightly differently.

If that's got you thinking about what's in your own cup, browse our range of leaf teas on the website.

Keep brewing, The Bellevue Team