Verdant Tea

This gongdao bei or tea pitcher shows off an old-school scholar’s studio tea setup, complete with a sculptural rock for contemplation, and an ancient burner. The scene connects modern gongfu back to old traditions, a reminder of tea culture spanning the centuries. The stunning bright white porcelain is perfect for appreciating the color of your tea as you pour.

Thin, fine and lustrous, high-fired porcelain pitcher from De Hua is highly vitrified and non-reactive, presenting a clean focused aroma in your teas. The classic blue and white landscape motif was meticulously hand-painted by Peng Yuan Qing Hua Studio in De Hua, one of China’s ancient porcelain capitols. The fine brushwork of a detailed pattern like this take years of practice, a good eye and a steady hand.

This dream-like, abstract hand-painted pitcher from Peng Yuan Qing Hua studio shows off their masterful, gestural painting skills and the depth of color contrast they achieve between lustrous white porcelain and traditional blue glaze. Their inspiration point was the enveloping feeling of the aromatic steam that rises from the pitcher and catches the light in misty waves. Their high-fired, highly-vitrified porcelain work brings out the deepest aromatics in your tea.

Not all glass teaware is on the same level. This pitcher from Xiangfu shows off glass crafting technique with unusually lustrous and clear glass, perfect tempering, and beautiful curves thanks to the unique rippled design. These curves are crafted to help your tea light up in the afternoon sun, showing off its stunning natural color, providing a sense of drama and anticipation as you pour into each cup. Glass wares like this pair effortlessly with Yixing, celadon, Jian Zhan or porcelain, making them a great flexible addition to any gongfu set.

This thin, fine, lustrous porcelain features a meticulously hand painted bamboo motif in incredible detail, fired in both traditional blue and deep green for a stunning two tone effect. The modern sleek shape is perfect for any gongfu set up, and the fully-vitrified non-reactive high fired porcelain amplifies the aromatics of any tea you pour from it, perfect for serious and contemplative tasting.

This striking pitcher features a hand-painted motif of delicate bamboo swaying in the wind. Pengyuan Qinghua Studio turns all of their own ultra-thin porcelain, vitrified at an extremely high firing temperature for teaware fine enough to amplify tea’s aromatics and allow light to pass through, giving each piece a glowing quality. The red brushwork is an elegant contrast to the white, and an evocative reference to the bamboo groves that grow alongside tea in the mountains of Fujian.

This impressive pitcher features a peaceful hand-painted scene highlighting a secret tea pavilion in the mountains. Pengyuan Qinghua Studio turns all of their own ultra-thin porcelain, vitrified at an extremely high firing temperature for teaware fine enough to amplify tea’s aromatics and allow light to pass through, giving each piece a glowing quality. The brushwork on this piece shows off the artist's skill at both detail in the pavilion itself, and gestural washes and abstraction on the rock face and cherry blossoms.

Classical Chinese porcelain motifs were all about the deep blue brushwork, with early blue glaze being the best color to survive the intense heat of the kiln. This pitcher evokes that classical style with an elegant hand-painted pomegranate tree. Pengyuan Qinghua Studio turns all of their own ultra-thin porcelain, vitrified at an extremely high firing temperature for teaware fine enough to amplify tea’s aromatics and allow light to pass through, giving each piece a glowing quality. Striking detail in the brushwork around the branches is matched with a beautiful dream-like quality in the blue of the fruit itself, showing off the artist’s skill.

This lovely tempered glass pitcher shows off your tea in gorgeous clarity, its facets lighting up in the sun. The wide geometric design lets you hold the edges without burning your hands, even with a full pitcher. This piece was designed and commissioned by the Peng Yuan Qing Hua Studio in Dehua to pair with their hand-painted gaiwans, teapots and teacups for a beautiful contrast.

We are excited to present Peng Hua Qing Yuan studio’s revival of Dehua’s most famous and classical style - milk white, also known as Blanc de Chine or “China White.” This unique, almost glowing milky glaze is achieved through a fusion of glaze and body, and the introduction of iron oxide for an oxidative firing environment, different from modern reductive kiln firing. This milky style was made famous in statues of Guanyin fired in Dehua’s ancient kilns, a style that looks like white jade, but with a thinness, luster and glow only possible in fine porcelain. This pitcher almost glows in the light, a stunning effect as you fill it with tea that shimmers right through the porcelain.

This creamy blue-green Ru glaze pitcher celebrates the tradition of bringing new life to old pieces through gold repair work. As ancient pieces are excavated, instead of preserving cracked shards, modern collectors are repairing these relics with gold so that they can be used in tea brewing the way the original artist intended. This gold work has spurred the growth of a new craft, adding adornment to the repairs- a modern dialog with ancient pieces. This Ru pot draws on the goldwork tradition with a golden motif of its own, a contrast to the lightly-crackled Ru glaze itself.

This fully hand-thrown, hand shaped tea pitcher highlights Master lin Xi’s research into ancient Song Dynasty style glazing techniques, particularly the famous and sought after Hare’s Fur style of long brown lines against black- an effect Lin Xi is able to capture because he personally excavates his glaze materials from the same sites used by Song Dynasty kilns, and blends the glaze from raw natural minerals. This pitcher's unique shape is meant to be as close as possible to the classic Jian Zhan tea bowl shape, both for the heat reflection in the kiln and to show off the glazing at the widest angles of light.

Oil Spot, or you di is one of the oldest and most traditional Song Dynasty forms. Award-winning master-potter Lin Xi has done years of research on ancient techniques and in his unique one-man studio, is working to revive the ancient art of you di glazing, sourcing and blending his clay and glazing material from the original mineral deposits tapped in the Song Dynasty. This traditional gongfu pitcher was fully hand-thrown, with glazes hand blended and dipped, and fired in tiny batches dependent on the whims of weather and kiln heat patterns to achieve the desired effect.