The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew houses a remarkable cache of tea leaves and tea material culture collected over the past 174 years.
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Aurora Prehn is an ethnobotanist working independently researching the nexus of culture and nature while consulting in areas of expertise under her LLC, People & Plants. She completed her BA in Anthropology and Environmental Studies from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2013 where her research examined local food culture, health, and the environment. Following graduation she spent five years in the specialty, organic tea and botanical industry at Rishi Tea finishing as a tea taster and educator. In 2019 she completed her MSc in Ethnobotany at the University of Kent and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in the United Kingdom. Her research took her to the country of Georgia where she spent three and a half months researching the biocultural relationship between Georgians, their landscape, and the grapevine. Aurora has been researching the tea and teaware artifacts in the Economic Botany Collection at Kew since December 2019 and is currently located in the William L. Brown Center at the Missouri Botanical Garden working with their Ethnobotany collections and data.
Mark Nesbitt is a Senior Research Leader and Curator of the Economic Botany Collection at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. After studying agricultural botany at the University of Reading, he spent 15 years researching prehistoric agriculture in the Near East, completing his MSc and PhD at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL. In 1999 he joined Kew, focusing on useful plant projects including Plant Cultures, a major outreach programme centred on British Asian communities and plants. Since 2005 he has been responsible for curating the Economic Botany Collection, including development of active research collaborations focusing on the history of materials and medicines, and the repurposing of historic biocultural collections to address contemporary issues such as decolonisation and sustainability. His publications include The cultural history of plants (2005), Curating biocultural collections: a handbook (2014), Manual de Etnobotânica: Plantas, artefatos e Conhecimentos Indígenas (2017) and Just the tonic: the natural history of tonic water (2019).
A fascinating read.Thank you.
With the spread of Tea growing countries, building a 21st century collection is going to be amazing!
Hello, Apologies for the delay, I just saw your note. Thank you for taking time to read our piece. We agree, new origins, tea types and revivals are springing up around the globe and we’ll try to capture what we can. Thanks for the support! ~ Aurora and Mark
Always great to read something new about Robert Fortune. Many thanks
Alistair Watt
Hello. I am fascinated by Robert Fortune and am looking for the book, Robert Fortune A Plant Hunter in the Orient. Is this book written by you? Do you know where I can get a copy?
Cathy Roach