I made it to Tea Heaven!

My fabulous husband has an exhibition of his Warhol Surfboards at the StolenSpace Gallery in East London.  It runs through September 1, 2013.  While their for the opening we walked some of the poshest streets in London, visiting other galleries and extending invitations to others in the London art world to the BessellxWarhol Show. At one point in the day we passed a whole row of shop windows displaying beautiful arrangements of tea accessories, picnic provisions and other marvelous items arranged into elaborate scenes.  After tucking down a corner we visited a cutting edge contemporary gallery called the White Cube, and then doubled back and passed these gorgeous window displays.

I told Tim we just had to check it out, and a well dressed door man opened the big brass door to a world of delights since 1707, Fortnum and Mason.  It was like Main Street Disneyland in a way, bright jewel tones and pastels everywhere.  On the right of the entry began an expanse of sweets and candies like I had never seen, and on my left tea, all kinds of tea in all varieties of beautiful tins and boxes.  Towards the back of the room I remember cakes, cookies and chocolates.  When I thought it couldn't possibly get any better, I reached the center of the store, and it opend up into a pillar of space linking the many tiers of this heaven, like the big mall in San Francisco at a Bart stop that would be easy to get from while in college.  This enables you to look up and down and see that you were in fact on the second floor, with one more below and four more above!  A floor for tea cups and pots as well as dishes, pots and pans, really everything you might need for your table and kitchen.  The bottom floor had more market items, meet, fish, cheese, olives and such, really beautiful food and often in exquisite packaging.  There were floors for both ladies gifts and mens gifts.

On my flight home from London I watched a documentary about the Queen's Jubilee Festivities this last year, and sure enough a visit to mmm with her daughter-in-law and great-grand-daughter-in-law (!) was an important event featured in the movie.  Those lovely ladies all dressed up for a visit to the store to receive big picnic hampers filled with delights for a picnic in Queen Mary's Rose Garden!  No one greeted me with such a gift, but I made a selection from that castle of gorgeous home sundries, and came home with two basic teas that I chose mainly to reuse the cans as storage in my kitchen for my Robin's Nest tea!  I also chose these teas as they are both favorites that I carry in my line, and I wanted to compare the teas.