Ambreen Butt’s mornings and masterpieces begin the same way: with tea. A staple in traditional Persian miniature painting, tea staining serves as the foundation for many of her works on paper. Butt prefers loose leaves to bags and fine-tunes her steeping time to produce just the right hue. Unlike her work’s later layers, which need an exacting, meticulous touch, the tea-staining process calls for big gestures: Butt uses her whole body to cover her canvas in a free-form style.

As for the product itself, it has personal significance for Butt and her family. As she says, “We travel with the tea that we drink. It’s the home that contains everything in it.”