Fortune Teller’s Tea Cup
Jane Lyle, ca. 2000
Ceramics, glaze, and ink
Dimensions variable
Gifted in 2014
Personal collection
Fortune reading through tea leaves, also known as tesseography, is an international practice and tradition, particularly popularized through contemporary cultural forms such as J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter. In western society, the practice of reading tea leaves comes from Ancient Greece where wine stains in a glass once full were used in non-literate communities to tell stories and use omens to mystically interpret the future. Many other substances were then used historically as fortune telling became more commercialized, such as splatters of wax or lead. As the tea trade took over the world, so did tea leaf readings.
This cup highlights the connection between perception and the future. As artists we are taught to look at the world through a creative and critical lens. Like all things this takes practice and many of us do it unintentionally - looking for tangible imagery in the clouds and faces in tree bark, for example. Beyond looking at things is interpretation. While the cup is decorated with symbols with meanings that vary culturally, it is the tea leaves that are the source of true symbolic interpretation. The tea cup collects sediment and asks you to prescribe the meaningless with significance through the lenses of art history, natural history, occult mythology, and more.
The work of tea leaf reading does not stop at symbolic interpretation; tea semiotics are then utilized to predict an individual’s near future. I chose this cup to reflect my opinions regarding the future: the present and future are one in the same. At any given moment the present was the future a second ago. The infinite futures predicted by fortune telling come to fruition with enough frequency to tantalize. The predictions spark hope for a brighter future or induce caution out of fear of impending doom. Too much of either can be dangerous, but a little of both is essential for a fulfilling life.
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are given numerous blunt predictions daily; from experts, politicians, friends, and optimists. These predictions may not come from a tea cup but reading them is a very similar process. We must be critical of the information presented to us, for those who are uncertain and anxious are routinely taken advantage of. There are those with the tools to determine more accurate fortunes, even if we don’t like what we hear. No matter what the future holds, it can eventually be better then the present.
Gabriel Evans-Cook