Companiesandme

When my brother Ahmed and I decided to start Numi Organic Tea in the summer of 1998, it was a given that I would do the art on the packaging and he would do the tea blends. He had owned and operated tea houses in Prague and knew a lot about tea. I have been drawing since my childhood and was steeped in the Arts. We both have been creative all our lives and it just didn’t occur to us to “outsource” our package design. We would collaborate towards a vision and I would sketch out the options.

My first drawings were playful and whimsical – a colorful Bedouin tent with a stikan style cup and flying teapot.

We called the company “Noomi” after a dry desert lime we drank as children in Iraq. The spelling was a transliteration. After playing with spelling and consulting friends on what each felt like and which “stuck”, we changed the spelling to “Numi” as it looked more “exotic” and Middle Eastern while “Noomi” felt more like sub-Saharan Africa.

While that tea inspired both the creation and naming of our company, we have come across several iterations and meanings from around the world for these resounding two syllables:

In Shaman lore, Num is the chief celestial spirit; Num has also been referred to as an ecstatic state.

Numen or Numinous comes from the Latin denoting the power or presence of divinity; the supernatural; transcendence; in communion with a wholly other; and the tendency to attract, fascinate and compel. Plato referred to the numinous as an archetypal world that manifested into the phenomenal world of form.

Numi in Latin also refers to a collector of coins.

In Hindi, Numi means taste or fragrance.

In Hebrew, Nomi means putting a girl to sleep.

We have heard that in South America, Numi refers to a friend of plants.

Numi in Chinese means sticky rice.

In December of 1998, I spent a month at an Art Residency in South Africa. During that time, I was exploring ways of working that were more atmospheric and textural. On coming back to the States, we agreed to let go of the flying teapot and try something more ephemeral that captured the “numinous.” I thought, if I can get into this space where I can channel creative energy, the packaging will implicitly feel spiritual. We didn’t want to be “pop” spiritual which seemed to be the in thing for tea packaging at the time. We wanted it to be real and transformative.

At first I started to paint from photos of animals I took while I was in Africa on Safari. I painted in oil on small tin plates I brought back from my trip. We used these to make monoprints running them through a printing press. Concurrently, Ahmed and I wanted to create textures for the box backgrounds using the teas themselves. He started to crush the teas and herbs with two stones from my garden. We placed them in test tubes and lined them up in my small kitchen which acted as an art studio. Then I started to dip leaves from the garden into the tea pigment to create imprints or stains on paper. I would go to the art store every day to buy new mediums to mix into the powders and Ahmed would get more and more frustrated with me, not to mention that we didn’t have any money to spend on experiments. At one point I went to the local Art College, CCAC (California College of Arts & Crafts) to use their printing press to create the tea texture imprints and the painting monoprints. As I naively started to work, a teacher stopped to ask if I was a student and on acknowledging that I wasn’t, he said I needed to pay $50 to use their presses. I admitted that I didn’t have the money.

He then gave me a fabulous idea: paint on the tin plate or create the tea stained leaf design; place it on a board; place the paper on top of it; place another board on top of that; place the sandwiched boards under the tire of your car; and drive over it!!! “What a great idea!” I thought. And so there I was, at 2 in the morning driving back and forth over various designs to obtain tea stained leaf imprints and monoprints of paintings. After struggling with a painting of a lion for weeks, Ahmed finally placed a stack of his old photos on the kitchen table and said, “Paint these!” Like magic, an image of an old man walking in an alleyway in Morocco rose to the top of the pile. This was the last picture Ahmed developed in his career as a photographer. The painting came together in less than 15 minutes. It had just the feeling we wanted: free-flowing, ethereal, atmospheric… beautiful. So, what did I do? Naturally, I placed a paper on top of it, sandwiched them between the two boards and drove over it. As you can imagine, the car press is not an exact science and the image transfers into a blur. As I stared at the now smudged original painting on tin and saw how beautiful it was as is, I decided to leave it in that form, scanning the actual tin paintings for the box design. I then painted the image again in about 15 minutes and that “man in the alley” has remained our signature look for the past 11 years.

The textures we ended up using for the backgrounds became simply tea stains. I continued to use Ahmed’s photos as inspiration for many of the paintings. Others came from other sources or my imagination. We matched images to the places where the tea flavors or names came from. Aged Earl Grey was of an older man weathered with wisdom (from one of Ahmed’s photos); Monkey King Jasmine Green was a Chinese image of monks; Gen Mai Cha, Toasted Rice Green, was a landscape image of rice patties. Sweet Meadows Chamomile Lemon was a meadow and tree; and Red Mellow Bush Rooibos conveyed a slice of South Africa.

Many people ask us why we don’t have pictures or documentation of those days. I think when you are engaged in a process and engrossed in a moment, you don’t think about how you are going to recollect those moments in the future. And, of course, Ahmed and I didn’t foresee the success of Numi or care about PR at the time. We were just two artists doing our thang.

I’ve learned several lessons over the years in the process of painting almost 30 small 3.5” x 4.5” scenic paintings. Initially, I was interested in moving people beyond the ordinary. In a grocery aisle full of bright colors and loud messages, I was aiming for serenity, surrender and solitude: a warm and inviting space where one is drawn into otherworldliness far away yet within – an inner reflective place. At the time, I had been introduced to Joanna Macey, an environmental and spiritual teacher. She claimed that Americans were psychically numb. Mother Theresa said that Americans were rich in money yet poor in spirit. I too wondered what we were running to and how we as a people were losing deeper feeling and connection. I had also been reading Milan Kundara’s Slowness and resonated with that quality of life. So, it was through my paintings that we established the message of Numi “A journey of imagination begins with a cup of tea and a quiet moment… Tea is liquid meditation, reminding us to enter a time and space to find our own thoughts and visions. We invite you to Take the Tea Transformation.”

Another learning I received was the art of mark making and communication. There are several great painters whom I had and still admire: Goya, Rembrandt, Rothko, Tapie and Da Vinci. Their work reflects their soul and their lives – their marks full of heart rather than ego. Layers of feeling and subtlety imbue the art so luscious and rich we are transported into our own feelings. I was only hoping to slightly tap into that rich history of what I believe retains the soul of humanity: ART. I had previously read Wassily Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art whereby he discusses Form and Content: (paraphrasing) Form only arises out of Content and not the other way around. They are interchangeable once intention (what he calls inner necessity) is established. Indeed, what is said is how it is said. That makes all the difference. My “style” came out of what I was communicating. I could feel and see how the marks made on a surface could communicate the feeling I was portraying. It has been an enormously valuable lesson for me both in art and in life.

As Numi the brand has evolved, I hope that the art on the packaging has touched people in many ways. I hope too that it has impacted the ideas and possibilities for product packaging.

Just this morning, I was cleaning out one of my letter bins and found an old “fan mail.” It was from a 63-year-old mother and care giver to a severely disabled veteran of the Iraq war and also her 6-year old grandson. She says:

“With all the challenges I have to face each day, there is nothing I enjoy more than indulging in a moment of escape while using your great product. I can honestly say that I have never written a letter about a product before but then again, there has never been a product that has done a better job of punctuating some of my dark days with a bit of sunshine than yours. Your company has profoundly improved the quality of life for me and my family.”

I hope that is in part due to both the tea and the art.