Beer & Cheese, a staple of the Taipei bar scene, has continuously proven that it is so much more than just, well, beer and cheese. The bar will be hosting their first arts and crafts market on Sunday afternoon, with stalls selling jewelry, skincare products, ceramics and even baked goods, all made by Taipei-based artists and entrepreneurs.
Though Matt King enjoys a good pint of craft beer, it’s his ceramic tea sets (and also plates, bowls and vases) that will be on sale on Sunday.
King, who recently launched Crown Ceramics in Taiwan, has been hooked on making pottery since he signed up for his first pottery class at age 15. The MFA graduate from the Tainan National University of the Arts now makes pottery by hand in his studio in the mountains of Yangmingshan (陽明山).
Photo courtesy of Crown Ceramics
“I appreciate the quiet neighborhood and the scenery here — it allows me to focus when I get into my studio to work,” King tells the Taipei Times.
He adds that so far, the market has been quite good for the small community of expat ceramics artists, something which he ascribes to Taiwan’s strong tea culture.
“People want to use unique wares during their tea ceremonies or while just enjoying some tea on their own,” King says.
Photo courtesy of Crown Ceramics
Since he doesn’t have a wheel, King creates organic textures with clay, stretching them out into flat slabs and cutting them into circular pieces and long strips to form cups and bowls, which he later fires in a wood kiln, a process which takes up to two weeks to complete.
It sounds simple, but the technique is hard to perfect. After nearly 20 years of working with clay, some of King’s pieces still blow up in the kiln.
“It just comes with the territory,” he quips.
Photo courtesy of KP Kitchen Taiwan
BAKED GOODIES
Another vendor who enjoys the daily grind of being in the workshop — in this case, her kitchen — is Karen Farley, the chief baker of KP Kitchen Taiwan (凱焙廚房).
KP Kitchen Taiwan was founded last year by Farley and her husband Patrick Bosworth to provide customers with do-it-yourself baking ingredients and spice mixes for simple, North American-style home-baking.
As for Sunday’s market, there will be chocolate brownies and chocolate and vanilla cakes with green tea frosting, as well as Irish soda bread and vegetarian chili for lovers of the savory.
Farley, who started baking when she was eight years old by helping her mother out in the kitchen, says she gets customers — including fathers — coming to buy ingredients from them because they want to spend some bonding time with their children in the kitchen.
“It brings me great joy that we can play a small part in recreating that old-fashioned family time,” says Farley.
To many of her expat customers from North America, re-creating these baked goodies helps give them a taste of home, while Taiwanese customers are eager to try new foods.
Home-cooking has certainly become more popular in recent years, something which goes against the grain of Taiwan’s eating out culture. Farley believes a lot of it has to do with concerns over food safety.
“A growing consciousness about food safety has led to a desire in Taiwan to have a hands-on role in food preparation,” she says.
It may come as a surprise to some that Farley bakes with a toaster oven. In fact, much can be done with a toaster oven, she says, even a simple roast chicken.
“The products are specifically designed for easy baking in Taiwanese kitchens, and convenient with small portion sizes,” Farley says.
Other items up for sale at Sunday’s market include handmade jewelry and clothing inspired by North African cultures and the Tao Aborigines of Orchid Island created by Anansy by Doriane, handmade, natural skin care products by Embra Natural Skin Care and ceramic pipes made by TwigPipes.
Taiwan has next to no political engagement in Myanmar, either with the ruling military junta nor the dozens of armed groups who’ve in the last five years taken over around two-thirds of the nation’s territory in a sprawling, patchwork civil war. But early last month, the leader of one relatively minor Burmese revolutionary faction, General Nerdah Bomya, who is also an alleged war criminal, made a low key visit to Taipei, where he met with a member of President William Lai’s (賴清德) staff, a retired Taiwanese military official and several academics. “I feel like Taiwan is a good example of
March 2 to March 8 Gunfire rang out along the shore of the frontline island of Lieyu (烈嶼) on a foggy afternoon on March 7, 1987. By the time it was over, about 20 unarmed Vietnamese refugees — men, women, elderly and children — were dead. They were hastily buried, followed by decades of silence. Months later, opposition politicians and journalists tried to uncover what had happened, but conflicting accounts only deepened the confusion. One version suggested that government troops had mistakenly killed their own operatives attempting to return home from Vietnam. The military maintained that the
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) announced last week a city policy to get businesses to reduce working hours to seven hours per day for employees with children 12 and under at home. The city promised to subsidize 80 percent of the employees’ wage loss. Taipei can do this, since the Celestial Dragon Kingdom (天龍國), as it is sardonically known to the denizens of Taiwan’s less fortunate regions, has an outsize grip on the government budget. Like most subsidies, this will likely have little effect on Taiwan’s catastrophic birth rates, though it may be a relief to the shrinking number of
Since its formation almost 15 years ago, Kaohsiung rock band Elephant Gym (大象體操) has shattered every assumption about contemporary popular music, and their story is now on screen in a documentary titled More Real Than Dreams. It’s an unlikely success story that says a lot about young people in Taiwan — and beyond. For a start, their sound is analog. In the film, guitarist Tell Chang (張凱翔) proudly says: “There is no AI in our sound.” His sister, bass player KT Chang (張凱婷) is the true frontwoman — less for her singing abilities than for her thunderous sound on the instrument. Fast like
RSS