Verdant Tea

This tempered glass pitcher is a versatile tool for brewing tea. It can be used to pour steeped tea from a teapot or gaiwan for each tea without dripping. It is also used to ensure that each guest gets tea steeped for the same amount of time regardless of whether you pour for them first or last. The glass pitcher is also a perfect tool for brewing green teas as it holds the right temperature for more delicate brews and shows off the tremendous beauty and color of the leaves as you steep your tea

This tall, elegant pitcher is made from lustrous De Hua high-fired porcelain. The highly vitrified porcelain is non-reactive, presenting a clean focused aroma in your teas. The gold gilding is a beautiful contrast to the subtle blue-green hue in the porcelain.

This striking glass pitcher ripples like glacial ice in the sun, amplifying light and showing off the color of your tea as you pour. With glass, you can see the leaves unfold in the pitcher for traditional green tea brewing and connect with the craft of the people behind the tea before you take your first sip. Tempered for brewing with boiling water and elegantly gilded, this is a stunning addition to any gongfu setup.

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.

Striking blue against brilliant white is the most classic and evocative style of Chinese porcelain. This pitcher was meticulously hand-painted using an incredibly fine brush, a steady hand, and a careful eye for a gorgeous freeform branch motif that evokes the abundance of late spring. The artists of the De Hua Peng Yuan Studio are dedicated to honoring the art of porcelain with lustrous and highly vitrified pieces that reflect the true aroma of 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.

The modern form of this pitcher makes it a clean and striking addition to any tea set. The bright white high-fired porcelain is perfect for bringing out the aromatics in any tea, and provides a beautiful contrast to the color of the finished brew. The Peng Yuan Studio sculpted this pitcher for a graceful spout that forms naturally from the top edges.

This masterful pitcher from Min Xin Tang takes meticulous craft to capture a perfectly clear mountain in glass. The effect of the mountain is stunning when the pitcher is filled with tea and lit by the sun as it catches the angles and shines like dawn breaking over a real mountain. The wood handle is a pleasure to hold, creating a gorgeous offset to the crystalline tempered glass.

This thin, fine, lustrous porcelain features a meticulously hand painted pine bough in incredible detail. 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 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.

The creamy blue of the distinctive Ru glaze was first pioneered in the Song Dynasty to evoke the sky. Now, the master craftspeople at the Jie Feng studio in Dehua fire these Ru pieces at over 1100 degrees celsius to bring back this song dynasty tradition. This classic pitcher is a pleasure to hold and a beautiful contrast to the color of tea, especially as it crackles over time.

This faceted hexagonal pitcher is the perfect pairing with a celadon gaiwan or tea pot. The facets show off the beautiful glazing work, while the modern picture style works in almost any set-up, even making a great color contrast paired with yixing clay teapots. Hand-finished and fired in a traditional Longquan kiln, this celadon is highly vitrified like glass, making it a non-reactive material that helps bring out incredible aromatic depth in your tea.

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 pitcher and brewing vessel is one of the oldest forms in Nixi pottery, with archaeological excavations unearthing similar pieces from over 2000 years ago. The form was originally designed for heating over a brazier to simmer yak butter tea. Today, many households use the ancient form as part of the more modern tea ceremony, adapted in Tibetan Nixi to simmering shu pu’er with salt. The elegance of the ancient form makes this a perfect pitcher to keep tea hot, while bringing deep minerality and forest-like aroma to each brew and slowly absorbing flavor and texture. Each hand made pitcher is unique with natural variation in finish and texture.

This lustrous, stunningly thin fully hand made pitcher is high fired and fully vitrified for the most non-reactive, aroma-amplifying porcelain possible. The craft of the Chun He Hui Guan studio is apparent in the graceful sweeping arc of the pitcher body and of course, the Chun He Hui Guan Studio’s signature gold work, a beautiful contrast to the almost glowing translucence of the porcelain itself.

This pitcher and brewing vessel is one of the oldest forms in Nixi pottery, with archaeological excavations unearthing similar pieces from over 2000 years ago. The form was originally designed for heating over a brazier to simmer yak butter tea. Today, many households use the ancient form as part of the more modern tea ceremony, adapted in Tibetan Nixi to simmering shu pu’er with salt. The elegance of the ancient form makes this a perfect pitcher to keep tea hot, while bringing deep minerality and forest-like aroma to the brew and slowly absorbing flavor and texture just like yixing pottery. The inlay work would have originally been done with shells in ancient times, but now, Nixi potters like Dangzhen Pichu are collaborating with masters in Jingdezhen, and the current practice now uses carefully trimmed pieces of porcelain as a tribute to an intersection of traditions. Each hand made pitcher is unique with natural variation in finish and texture.

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 unique 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. Each of Lin Xi’s pitchers is unique, relying on his technique of throwing a wide cup and ‘flicking’ the spout shape at the last moment to achieve the most fluid look. This technique requires the perfect weight and thickness of cup and even just the right humidity and weather to get right, so Lin Xi makes very few pitchers each year.

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.