I’ve been talking about it for a long time, finding or creating a teahouse that is more in alignment with my sense of style. I gave up looking about a week ago, so I started building a few days ago. The whole project started out with a nebulous picture of what I thought a teahouse should look like. I Googled “teahouse” and “japanese garden” and variations on that theme, and I searched through hundreds of photos.

I found a some photos from the garden in Golden Gate Park, San Franciso, California; Huntington Botanical Gardens, Glendale, California; and Seattle, Washington. Those are the only real, full sized Japanese gardens I’ve ever seen, but each one of them contributed to my vision of the perfect teahouse. Following are some representative photos:

View looking out of the large public teahouse in Golden Gate Park.

A view of the teahouse atop a hill at the magnificent Huntington Botanical Garden.

The little teahouse inspired pavillion at Seattle’s Japanese Garden.

A couple photos cannot truly reveal all the inspirations I gathered from my visits to these gardens. There were other influances also, like Fairchild Garden in South Miami and so many more influances. And during my Google searching I came upon new inspirations. Following are just a few photos I discovered.

This is actually another view of the Huntingtin teahouse.

I find special attraction to the smaller teahouses, perhaps because they conjur up images of a playhouse. In fact, when I was little I saw that Miami teahouse as a perfect playhouse.

I’ve consider that style is usually shaped by functionality. For example, the teahouse that is used by geisha to entertain patrons is by it’s nature a different style than the small teahouse that sits alone in a garden and used for performing the Tea Ceremony. A teahouse for refreshment and a feature of a public garden will be different that a private home that has a tea room attached. There is so much to think about.

I found myself pulled between the image of a standalone teahouse and a tea room that is part of a larger structure.

Yes, I’ve considered many, many ideas and still I wonder what the perfect Japanese teahouse is, and if I’ll ever discover it. Afterall, as with the Japanese garden, there is probably no single teahouse that is the same.