Teapot detail of Porca Miseria! Chandelier

Teapot detail from PORCA MISERIA! CHANDELIER 1994

Ingo Maurer (German , born 1932)

“The Porca Miseria! Chandelier is both a revolt against the slickness of contemporary design and Maurer’s celebration of cinematic slow-motion explosions, like those seen in Michelangelo Antonioni’s filn Zabriskie Point (1970).”

In Italian the name means “Miserable Sow”. Some say it means “Damn It!”. Designer Ingo Maurer made the chandelier as a humorous expression of anger.

MoMA, New York City, NY

Fascination with tea

The Seven Cups of Tea


"The first cup moistens my lips and throat,
the second cup breaks my loneliness,
the third cup searches my barren entrail but to find therein some five thousand volumes of odd ideographs.

The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration, - all the wrong of life passes away through my pores.

At the fifth cup I am purified;
the sixth cup calls me to the realms of immortals.

The seventh cup - ah, but I could take no more!

I only feel the breath of cool wind that rises in my sleeves.
Where is Horaisan? Let me ride on this sweet breeze and waft away thither."

-taken from a quote by Lotung, a Tang poet (The Book of Tea)