Intro to Alchemy: Brewing Lessons from Fine Tea to Garden Potions — July 26, 2026

Event Details

Date: Sun, July 26, 2026
Time: 3-5 pm (2 hours)
Location: Two Two (3221 Grand Ave, Oakland)
Materials: All materials will be provided; participants encouraged to bring additional brewables for experimentation (see below for more details)
Experience: No prior experience with tea is required
Capacity: 8 people

Intro to Alchemy: Brewing Lessons from Fine Tea to Garden Potions

This tea lounge is a hands-on brewing lesson and sampling session that introduces ceremonial tea as a medium for play and experimentation, inviting participants to develop personal relationships and rituals with tea. 

When anything travels, it also transforms. Rooted in gongfucha, a folk tradition of Chinese ceremonial tea, this workshop rejuvenates a traditional practice through contemporary forms and an invitation to play. 

This workshop will include:

• Hands-on brewing lesson

• Trying out different tea vessels

• Sampling a variety of traditional teas

• Sampling some blasphemy teas (exploring materials beyond the tea plant)

• Exploration with native plant material

• Experimentation with brewing participant-sourced material

• Field notes worksheet

There will be an opportunity to add on:

• A full limited-edition Alchemy I teaset (24 editions, 2 available on 7/26 for purchase)

• Limited-edition artist book

• Teas to take home

Who is this for?

Tea experts and tea-curious people; serious apprentices and not-so-serious pupils; button-up people and play-in-dirty-get-messy whimsy-fairies; everyone and anyone who would like to develop a relationship with tea in an environment that is as dedicated to ritual as a constantly re-created form. 

Please bring things from your kitchen, garden, and biosphere that you might like to try brewing. If you are not sure about the safety of your plant matter, please take a picture of the whole plant that you foraged from, so that we can research together during the session. If the material you are bringing is foraged or found, please thoroughly wash it before bringing it to the workshop. Vegetal matter only. And no mushrooms.

About the Artist

The session will be led by Kelsey Chen (@silkpunkbaby), an interdisciplinary artist, theorist, and tea practitioner. She began what will likely be a lifelong practice and study of tea with Tea Master Fang Zuo in 2022. Kelsey has poured tea and led workshops at universities, raves, and festivals. She is the founder of sessile things, a line of functional-sculptural forms developed in collaboration with local artists and artisans in the San Francisco Bay area. 

About Alchemy I teaset

This workshop is offered in accompaniment with the release of the Alchemy I teaset, a hand-blown teaset using functional pipe-glass by heritage local glassblower Guy Moore, the originator of the now-canonized form of the glass bowl (for marijuana smoking). 

This collection is the first of a series of functional-sculptural forms developed by @sessilethings in collaboration with local artists and artisans in the San Francisco Bay area. 

It comes out of the desire to punk traditional forms into new mediums as a prompt to reactivate time-honored rituals with respect and enough irreverence to allow for (inter)-play.