This evening I cleaned my small colllection of tea tins. Being displayed on a shelf in the kitchen they need a wipe now and then.
I have a couple of other tins but my favorite are the Mariage ones. I first became obsessed with tea after coming back from my first stay in Japan, um, 15 years ago. Before, to me, tea was an overbrewed Lipton Yellow teabag with a lump of sugar, quite a detestable beverage. While there, I drank sencha, bitter maccha with overly sugary sweets (not exactly my cup of tea, but I was in my try-to-do-everything-like-the-natives phase) and enjoyed houjicha, genmaicha and oolong tea, hot in winter and cold in summer. I discovered to my surprise that in hot weather cold tea was more quenching than water. A few months after coming back I found myself in a training session for work with a tea-loving Parisian, and asked him where to go to buy tea. He mentioned Mariage Frères, and on my next visit to the capital I went there and have kept going back over the years. I have had countless teas, lunches and brunches in Mariage branches in Paris, Shibuya and Ginza, and even visited the Kyoto and Kobe shops. I love the colonial atmosphere, the strictly-no-smoking policy, the decoration, of course the food and the tea, and most of all the wonderful mingled smell of hundreds of different kinds of teas that greets you when you enter.
Naturally being such a container nut, I love their tins and boxes. A couple of times I sent doll clothes packaged in empty tea tins, not only did they look pretty, they also smelled wonderful. If I had a big kitchen, I'd surely not resist the giant tea canisters in spite of their hefty price tag.
I also love my golden "draped" teapot and golden cups - a "coming home" present. Once when my parents and I were waiting our turn for tea in Ginza, I pointed out this teapot and mentioned how much I liked it. My father said he'd buy it for me when I came back to France, and it didn't fall on deaf ears.
Nowadays I'm lazy and drink mostly tea made from teabags, so when I ordered 2 tea jelly jars (to glue to the bottom of my small Ikea shelf), I added tea mousselines to my basket. At the beginning I was a purist and didn't drink flavored teas ; I favored Keemun, Yunnan and Kenya teas. Now I drink mostly flavored tea and spicy, peppery Chandernagor is one of my favorite.
To conclude, an oldie but goodie :
