Professor Katharine Burnett, founding director of the Global Tea Institute at UC Davis, will present a talk on  ”The Marvelously Extraordinary, Inventively Original Late Ming Teapot” at the annual Global Tea Institute Colloquium. 

Everybody knows what a teapot looks like. Or do they? Actually, when did a teapot start to look like a teapot? And why did they suddenly look so peculiar in China’s late 16th century, and then later, elsewhere in the world?

The conference, whose theme is The Art of Tea in Culture and Science, Society and Health,” will explore the arts and artful ways in which tea is understood across the disciplines and in the tea industry.

January 29, 2026 from 9:00 a.m. — 5:00 p.m. at the UC Davis Conference Center.