Our quest to optimise a teapot that would extract the very best of our directly sourced, loose-leaf tea took six months and close collaboration with one of the country’s leading potteries. Here, we head to Surrey Ceramics to shine a light on how their hands-on approach to craft infuses with our teas to create the perfect brew, time and time again.
The story behind our teapot does not begin at Surrey Ceramics but in Assam, India. In the tea gardens of the region, our friends at JING Tea promote better long-term livelihoods for the local tea farmers, protecting the craft of tea production and encouraging farming practices that develop soil health and biodiversity. By sourcing directly from single gardens, JING is able to create a sustainable economy in which tea producers can prosper and pass on their craft to new generations.
We think this is how tea should be grown and sold: carefully, thoughtfully, and with a positive impact on the world. So, when it comes to brewing the tea we source from JING in our bakeries, we wanted to create a pot that would do justice to all that care; a vessel that would literally be able to express all the goodness of directly sourced, loose-leaf tea grown with consideration for craft, quality, and people. For that, we headed to our friends at Surrey Ceramics.
Housed in the village of Grayshott, Surrey Ceramics is known to its close-knit local community as Grayshott Pottery and was founded in 1956, originally to produce porcelain clocks. For the last 30 years, Grayshott Pottery has been known for its handmade tableware and set up the brand Surrey Ceramics specifically to cater to restaurants and chefs. Today, in the same location as when it was founded, around 30 potters craft 1,200 pieces of tableware by hand per day.
“Autumn is tea season for lots of people, but for me every season is right for tea.”
We first got to know Surrey Ceramics when we worked with them on our cups and mugs, which were tweaked to suit our requirements for a sturdy but modern-feeling drinking vessel. The bigger challenge, though, was our need for a new teapot specifically designed and tailor-made to brew and pour tea in a way that reflected our belief that, because the pleasures of tea make it a ritual worth savouring, the objects involved with it should enhance the experience. Specifically, we believe a good pot should contain two servings, not over-brew after the first cup is served, and pour with satisfying ease.
On a recent visit to the pottery, we met with Sales Director Toby Hutchins. As we sat down early morning at the on-site café that adjoins the pottery workshop, it became clear from listening to Hutchins’ order that we were speaking to the right man about the pleasures of tea. “I’m a tea drinker through and through, never coffee,” he says, ordering an Assam Breakfast. “Autumn is tea season for lots of people,” he says, “but for me every season is right for tea.”
"We uphold the hand element of our craft”
When it came to our teapot, Hutchins explains how, working from a Danish model we provided as a reference, the team at Surrey Ceramics collaborated with a master model maker to create a form that would hold and conceal an inserted filter at the perfect height so that, after the first cup is poured, the tea leaves no longer infuses the remaining water, preventing the second cup from over-brewing. The design process took over six months, and was not completed until the shape of the spout was optimised.
Once the shape was perfected, the teapot was ready to go into production, which takes the form of potters hand-filling a cast with slip, before the form is trimmed, stamped, dried, glazed and fired. Like everything that comes out of the pottery, each piece is touched by hand at every stage of its making, something Hutchins says defines the company’s approach. “The bigger potteries won’t make anything unless they can produce 30,000 of the same shape. We have grown in size in recent years but always retaining our handmade processes – if we lose that then we lose our character, which is what makes us us. We uphold the hand element of our craft,” he says.
As well as their handicraft, the company is defined by its community values and integration into the local area. As per the wish of the founder, the company is run as an Employee Benefit Trust, which gives each 60 employees a stake in the success of the business, and probably explains why Hutchins, after 10 years in the company, is still a relative newbie; “Our staff are normally here for decades, which creates a lovely family-style atmosphere,” he says. With local community engagement ranging from school donations, fundraising events for the village and local charity support, Grayshott is, Hutchins explains “the heartbeat of the village.”
So, next time you visit us for tea -– perhaps accompanied by something sweet from our bakers’ table (might we recommend our pistachio, lemon & rose cake, or a honey cake?) – savour it with the knowledge that, from the tea fields of Assam to a pottery studio closer to home, both the teapot and the tea in it are the result of a community of people working together who care about making the best tasting cup possible. And from the hands of tea farmers in Assam to the skilled potters in Surrey, every step of the journey reflects our belief that the small rituals of daily life, like brewing tea, deserve objects and ingredients of the highest quality.
“Our staff are normally here for decades, which creates a lovely family-style atmosphere”
