For better or worse, coffee has just never been able to have the elegance of tea: while coffee is something to start your day or a functional drink while discussing the issues of the day, tea has always been an event into itself. Part of what makes tea what it has become is the mystique and splendour involved with it – there is something so refined about afternoon tea in the UK, so time-honoured about the Japanese tea ceremony. For today’s word, we are looking at the brilliance of tea through the truly Russian perspective of the samovar.
For those who are unaware of what a samovar is, it is a device used to boil water, traditionally for tea. With regard to origin, there are two potential sources for our word: the first and most obvious is from the Russian words for “self” (sam) and “boil” (varit), though there is also the possibility of it being borrowed from the Tatar word for “tea-urn,” sanabar. Though most modern samovars are know as much for the beauty of their design and accompanying artwork as their functionality, devices like the samovar have a history stretching back over 3 millennia to the Caucasus region as well as China.
Beyond the word itself and the potential history, it was Russia that took a mere water boiler and made it into something special. First manufactured by the Lisitsyn brothers in Tula in the 1770s, samovars initially required 12 individual stages of production, sometimes employing entire villages through just 1 of the 12 stages. From the beginning, samovars made in Tula were one of the earliest and most sought-after appliances in Russia, offering a gathering place to relax, enjoy a cup of tea, and discuss events. Their popularity even inspired the saying, “В Ту́лу со свои́м самова́ром не е́здят, which translates to, “One does not travel with his own samovar to Tula.” In the modern Russian home, especially during holidays, samovars are most likely found at the centre of the table – a tribute to past generations as well as a show of hospitality.
The first recorded mention of the word samovar in English comes from Otto von Kotzebue’s A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823–1826 (1830), explaining the use and typical location of a samovar: “A Samovar, or self-boiler..generally stands in the middle of the tea-table.” Further defining it half a century later (1882), London’s Pall Mall Gazette explains the operating of a samovar itself, interestingly, before the widespread usage of electricity and, indeed, electric samovars: “The samovar is a tea-kettle which has its fire in a tube running through it, and which, with a few pieces of lighted charcoal dropped into the tube, maintains the water at boiling point with a minimum of evaporation.”
Whether or not you have and use one or simply appreciate the aesthetics of an intricately hand-painted samovar, they definitely hold a place in the refined and distinguished world of elegant tea drinking.
