Chair #90

ASIAN INSPIRED SIDE CHAIR

—Designer unknown

The chair is in a room surrounded by passionate, cinnabar red walls. Two Asian red and white ginger jars are on either side of it. A woman enters the room—her vintage silk kimono robe wrapped around her—and sits in the chair. She sips her smokey, lapsang souchong tea, dreaming of going back to China someday.

+ + +

History of Lapsang Souchong Tea

Lapsang Souchong tea has a famously smoky aroma and flavor. To create this black tea from the Fujian provence of China, tea leaves are dried in bamboo baskets over pine fires, achieving a perfect balance of smoke and tea flavor. You'll either love or hate this tea. Legend claims that the smoking process was discovered by accident. During the Qing Dynasty, an army unit passing through Xingcu camped out in a tea factory filled with fresh leaves awaiting processing, which held up usual production. When the soldiers left the workers had to think of a way to rush the drying time in order to get the tea to market in time. They lit open fires of pine wood, and the delicious smoked pine flavor created by this process created a sensation, and a new product was born.