Since many people cannot get to London to visit the Chitra Collection in person, Evelyn Earl, Assistant Curator of the Collection, has kindly agreed to host an online ‘Show & Tell’ event of precious items from the Collection.
This will take place on Thursday 25th June 2025, from 4pm to 5.30pm
We will send out the zoom link 24 hours ahead of the event.
Numbers are not restricted and everyone is welcome.
Sèvres porcelain factory, 1845
Louis-Jean Thévenet (painter)
Sèvres porcelain factory,1765
Royal Worcester 1875
Evelyn will select pieces from the Collection and will tell us about their provenance and previous owner(s) and any relevant details about the age, manufacture and use of each piece. In some cases, Evelyn will show the real object and in others she will show images in a powerpoint.
In 2011 Nirmal Sethia, set himself the task of acquiring the world’s greatest collection of teawares to record and preserve tea cultures of the past. Today, the collection, named in honour of his late wife, Chitra, totals almost 2000 objects and is already the world’s finest and most comprehensive of its kind. You will see ancient pieces from China, Europe, Asia and the Americas, and from over a thousand years of history.
The Chitra Collection is a unique reflection of the importance of tea and the diversity of tea drinking customs across the world. For centuries, tea played a central role in culture and society as a medicinal and revitalising drink, a focus for hospitality and familial domesticity, and as a symbol of national identity. Tea was also politically and economically significant as a source of profit, a tool of empire and as a trigger for revolution, war and slavery. Today, tea is the most ubiquitous of beverages and occupies an important place in the heart of Britain’s life and psyche. The exquisite and innovative tea wares preserved in the Chitra Collection are testimony to the significance of tea and the rich material culture that it has inspired over the past millennium.
