Material Culture of Tea in Turkey: Transformations of Design through Tradition, Modernity and Identity

ABSTRACTABSTRACTRituals are repeated acts reinforcing the sense of identity for the individual in society, building up the links with a shared past. The ritual of tea drinking along with the values, practices, the kinds of objects and customs associated with this tradition, is significant in Turkish culture. The reason to focus specifically on tea drinking and the involved objects is that tea is brewed in a certain way and the necessary devices have been designed and developed accordingly. With its historical, cultural and physical contexts, the whole event could be said to be standing at the cutting edge of tradition, modernity and identity in modern Turkish society. The problematic centring around these concepts of tradition and identity is their positioning in the modern world. The ways in which these traditions have been transformed, shaped and reinvented within the dynamics of modern Turkish society is the subject of further discussion.KEYWORDS: traditionmodernityidentitydesignTurkish teapot set Additional informationNotes on contributorsŞebnem Timur ÖğütBiographyŞebnem Timur Öğüt, PhD, was born in Ankara in 1974. She graduated from the Department of Industrial Design at Middle East Technical University (METU) in 1994 and received her degrees of MFA (1996) and PhD (2001) from Bilkent University, Department of Graphic Design. She has worked as a research assistant at METU in the Department of Industrial Design (1995–2002) and has conducted a post-doctoral study as an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London in the Department of Anthropology on Material Culture (2002–2003). She is currently teaching at Istanbul Technical University, Department of Industrial Product Design. Her research interests particularly focus on design and objects as cultural phenomena at the intersection point of semiotics, material culture and visual culture studies.