Beyond the Teacup: 18th Century Sino-British Tea Trade and Design Cultural Exchange

This book focuses on tea-ware design exchanges between China and the UK since the middle of 17th Century, and explores how design encouraged trade and how the market demand influenced the development of design. The spirit of Chinese tea came to Britain alone with tea itself, and enriched the design of tea-ware, as well as British tea culture. During this process, tea-related oriental aesthetics evolved into an aesthetic image mechanism and developed as aesthetic concept, which infiltrated from private space to social space. Zhang Chi, Associate Professor at Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology. She received her Ph.D. in Design Theory and History from the School of Design, China Central Academy of Fine Arts. She also holds a master's degree in Curating Contemporary Design from Kingston University,London,UK. She was awarded a full scholarship from the Sino-British Fellowship Trust for the academic year 2011/2012. Her research primarily focuses on cultural exchange in design from a global perspective. Chi was participated in numerous national and provincial research projects, authored one monograph, translated one book, and published over 20 papers in Chinese and English in core Chinese journals, general journals, and international conferences.