Interview with a Collector
THE CHITRA COLLECTION
Mr Sethia, Chairman of Newby Teas, speaks to Fatema Ahmed of Apollo Magazine about the passion which spurred a unique collection
I
n 2011 Mr Sethia, the Chairman of Newby Teas, and the connoisseur behind the Chitra Collection set himself the task of acquiring the world’s great-
est collection of tea antiquities. Today, the collection, named in honour of his late wife, Chitra, totals almost 1,700 objects and is already one of the finest private collections of historic teawares. With objects drawn from Europe, Asia, and the Americas, and from over a thousand years of history, the Chitra Collection is a unique reflection of the history of tea and the impor- tance and diversity of tea drinking customs across the world. For centuries, tea played an important role in society as a medicinal and revitalising drink, a focus for hospitality and familial domesticity and as a sym- bol of national identity. It has also created huge rev-
enues for governments and led to slavery, revolution and war. Some of the highlights in the collection in- clude rare Chinese Song Dynasty (960-1279) tea bowls that were used in the celebrated doucha ceremonies, a wide range of Chinese and Japanese export wares of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, one of the earliest surviving European silver-gilt teapots made by William III’s goldsmith Adam Loofs, a Sèvres déjeuner set commissioned by Louis XVIII for the Duchess de Berry and an unusually large enamel tea caddy by Fabergé. These exquisite and innovative tea wares are testimony to the rich material culture that tea has inspired over the past millennium. After water, tea is now the most frequently con- sumed drink in the world and, in our age of mass-pro-
Autumn 2016
30
Sèvres tea service, Antoine Beranger (painter), France, 1816
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