With the book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll created one of the most cherished stories of all time.
In a partnership with Ilustrarte, Vista Alegre is launching the Tea With Alice tea set, full of all the magic and charm of the story and its characters. This is a Teresa Lima creation, taking the work she had already done in a Portuguese version of the book a step further.
“Many years ago, I was invited to illustrate a Portuguese version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”
It was the year marking the 150th anniversary of the first time Lewis Carroll told the story, and The Story Museum in Oxford celebrated the event with an exhibition, allowing visitors to browse a selection of some of the most acclaimed versions of Alice. Thus arose the challenge of illustrating – once again – this timeless work, but in a totally different medium: in porcelain. Bringing the peculiar and imaginative characters to life in the concave and convex shapes of a tea set was a very interesting experience.
Thus, Tea with Alice was born – an exhibition and a tea set bearing the same name. An invitation to enjoy pleasant conversation, accompanied by a cup of tea and biscuits. ‘Always at six o’clock!’”
Teresa Lima has a Degree in Painting from the School of Fine Arts in Lisbon and began to devote herself to illustrating children's books since 1994 - a path rapidly rewarded in the 3rd edition of the National Prize of Illustration (1998) that she won with the recreation of Alice in Wonderland. The imagination of Lewis Carroll and other texts full of fantasy suited the delicacy of her visual language, perfected in a mixed technique where painting, drawing and collage converge.