Verdant Tea

This creamy blue-green Ru glaze teapot 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.

Award-winning artist Lai Xiaohong brings together fine clay and a modern, organic sensibility to traditional forms. This classic "Xi Shi" teapot is a perfect example of her hand crafted work. The lovely Da Hong Pao Ni clay will age beautifully with almost any kind of tea, gaining more depth and luster over years of brewing.

Award-winning artist Lai Xiaohong brings together fine clay and a modern, organic sensibility to traditional forms. This Qin Xiang teapot is a perfect example of her hand crafted work. The mottled Di Cao Qing clay ages beautifully with almost any kind of tea, gaining more depth and luster over years of brewing.

Award-winning artist Lai Xiaohong brings together fine clay and a modern, organic sensibility to traditional forms. This "Xin Shi" teapot is a modern take on the classic Shi Piao, and a perfect example of her hand crafted work. This lovely Zi Ni clay ages beautifully with almost any kind of tea, gaining more depth and luster over years of brewing.

Award-winning artist Lai Xiaohong is famous for her hand-excavated and blended Di Cao Qing clay, a rich, dense and mottled clay that Lai Xiahong blends from minerals settled in her trough after months of careful aging. This meticulously hand-built Xian Pou form shows off Lai Xiaohong’s traditional grounding and her modern fluid sensibility in her art. The warm Di Cao Qing clay is ready to take on more depth and luster over a lifetime of use.

Award-winning artist Lai Xiaohong brings together fine clay and a modern, organic sensibility to traditional forms. This adorably small capacity Zhou Pan teapot is a perfect example of her hand crafted work. This stunning Di Cao Qing clay ages beautifully with almost any kind of tea, gaining more depth and luster over years of brewing.

Award-winning artist Lai Xiaohong is famous for her hand-excavated and blended Di Cao Qing clay, a rich, dense and mottled clay that Lai Xiahong blends from minerals settled in her trough after months of careful aging. This meticulously hand-built Xi Shi form shows off Lai Xiaohong’s traditional grounding and her modern fluid sensibility in her art. The warm Di Cao Qing clay is ready to take on more depth and luster over a lifetime of use.

Award-winning artist Lai Xiaohong brings together fine clay and a modern, organic sensibility to traditional forms. This Gu Xiang teapot is a perfect example of her hand crafted work. This uniquely speckled chen pi clay ages beautifully with almost any kind of tea, gaining more depth and luster over years of brewing.

Much of Lai Xiaohong’s career has been a meditation on the various shapes inspired by the moon. This qing duan clay ban yue or “half moon” teapot is one of her oldest most classic forms, perfectly balanced with graceful sweeping lines and a perfectly integrated spout. Lai Xiaohong hand-crafted this teapot for a lifetime of use, selecting a clay that will continue to grow more and more lustrous over each brewing session.

Award-winning artist Lai Xiaohong’s beautiful Yu Zi Ni brings vivid color and deep speckling to this classic Li Xing form through a careful blend of her personally-excavated Zi Ni and Zhu Ni clays. The "Miao Xiang" form allows the intensity of color and mottling in the unique Yu Zi Ni to shine. Lai Xiaohong crafted this teapot for a lifetime of use, selecting and hand-blending a clay that will continue to grow more and more lustrous over each brewing session.

Award-winning artist Lai Xiaohong is famous for her hand-excavated and blended Di Cao Qing clay, a rich, dense and mottled clay that Lai Xiahong blends from minerals settled in her trough after months of careful aging. This meticulously hand-built Jia Duan form shows off Lai Xiaohong’s traditional grounding and her modern fluid sensibility in her art. The warm Di Cao Qing clay is ready to take on more depth and luster over a lifetime of use.

Award-winning artist Lai Xiaohong is famous for her hand-excavated and blended Di Cao Qing clay, a rich, dense and mottled clay that Lai Xiahong blends from minerals settled in her trough after months of careful aging. This meticulously hand-built Long Dan form shows off Lai Xiaohong’s traditional grounding and her modern fluid sensibility in her art. The warm Di Cao Qing clay is ready to take on more depth and luster over a lifetime of use.

Award-winning artist Lai Xiaohong is famous for her hand-excavated and blended Di Cao Qing clay, a rich, dense and mottled clay that Lai Xiahong blends from minerals settled in her trough after months of careful aging. This meticulously hand-built Qiao Gu form shows off Lai Xiaohong’s traditional grounding and her modern fluid sensibility in her art. The warm Di Cao Qing clay is ready to take on more depth and luster over a lifetime of use.

Award-winning artist Lai Xiaohong’s beautiful Yu Zi Ni brings vivid color and deep speckling to this classic Li Xing form through a careful blend of her personally-excavated Zi Ni and Zhu Ni clays. The "Feng Pou" form allows the intensity of color and mottling in the unique Yu Zi Ni to shine. Lai Xiaohong crafted this teapot for a lifetime of use, selecting and hand-blending a clay that will continue to grow more and more lustrous over each brewing session.

Award-winning artist Lai Xiaohong brings together fine clay and a modern, organic sensibility to traditional forms. This Gu Xiang teapot is a perfect example of her hand crafted work. This uniquely speckled chen pi clay ages beautifully with almost any kind of tea, gaining more depth and luster over years of brewing.

This teapot from award-winning artist Lai Xiahong was hand built using a beautiful Zi Yu Pao Ni purple clay. The versatile pot features a carving of chariot riders pulled by a prancing horse. The lid is well-fitted, and the spout and handle are carefully sculpted for a lifetime of use.

Award-winning artist Lai Xiaohong is famous for her hand-excavated and blended Di Cao Qing clay, a rich, dense and mottled clay that Lai Xiahong blends from minerals settled in her trough after months of careful aging.

This meticulously hand-built "Jiu Shui" pot balances a playful sensibility with a refined form. The body of the pot features a carved tea pet to accompany every tea session and the lid is adorned with a carefully sculpted handle inspired by natural rock formations - traditional scholarly objects of contemplation. 

Award-winning artist Lai Xiaohong is famous for her hand-excavated and blended Di Cao Qing clay, a rich, dense and mottled clay that Lai Xiahong blends from minerals settled in her trough after months of careful aging. This meticulously hand-built Han Yuan form shows off Lai Xiaohong’s traditional grounding and her modern fluid sensibility in her art. The warm Di Cao Qing clay is ready to take on more depth and luster over a lifetime of use.

Award-winning artist Lai Xiaohong is famous for her hand-excavated and blended Di Cao Qing clay, a rich, dense and mottled clay that Lai Xiahong blends from minerals settled in her trough after months of careful aging. This meticulously hand-built Si Yuan form shows off Lai Xiaohong’s traditional grounding and features a carved bird, perced playfully on the curve of the pot. The warm Di Cao Qing clay is ready to take on more depth and luster over a lifetime of use.

Award-winning artist Lai Xiaohong is famous for her hand-excavated and blended Di Cao Qing clay, a rich, dense and mottled clay that Lai Xiahong blends from minerals settled in her trough after months of careful aging. This meticulously hand-built Xin Piao form shows off Lai Xiaohong’s traditional grounding and her modern fluid sensibility in her art. The warm Di Cao Qing clay is ready to take on more depth and luster over a lifetime of use.

Award-winning artist Lai Xiaohong is famous for her hand-excavated and blended Di Cao Qing clay, a rich, dense and mottled clay that Lai Xiahong blends from minerals settled in her trough after months of careful aging. This meticulously hand-built Miao Xiang form shows off Lai Xiaohong’s traditional grounding and her modern fluid sensibility in her art. The warm Di Cao Qing clay has been carefully swirled with golden Duan Ni for an incredible fluid effect, and is ready to take on more depth and luster over a lifetime of use.

This stunning sculptural piece is master potter Zhu Huan’s take on the traditional Shi Piao form. The Shi Piao is a celebration of perfect triangles, mirrored in the proportion of the pot body, the lid and spout, an aesthetic reflection of Taoist aesthetics. In true Taoist form, Zhu Huan has taken flight with the Shi Piao, bringing curves and graceful elegance to a traditionally geometrically-bound form. The Yuan Kuang Zhu Ni clay is a definite inspiration for the “liberated” ratios, as the clay has the formality and weight of classic Zhu Ni, but with a mottled natural depth. This clay is ready to take on a lifetime of patina with use and give back to every tea it brews.

This form is about restraint and elegance; using the grace of craft to give the incredible Di Cao Qing clay a way to shine. The form is familiar- rooted in the fang gu one of the most classic styles, but perfectly its own.The beautifully sculpted curves lift the pot higher, the spout and handle provide a more nuanced balance to the body. Master potter Zhu Huan really shows her skill with her commentary on the classics like this, making them her own. The Yuan Kuang Di Cao Qing clay had to age and settle out for months in the trough for just the right depth and mottling, giving the whole piece a luster ready to grow even more stunning with years of brewing.

The Fang Gu form is one of the most traditional and widely loved Yixing styles in the world for good reason. The wind rounded body and the large lid make it practical for any size or shape of tea, and it slow profile gives it a balance and sense of stability while brewing. Master potter Zhu Huan brings her skill and stunning clay to bear on the Fang Gu with this incredible piece, executing a more perfect balance of form that can only be achieved through experienced hand crafting. Her Zhu Ni clay is a deep and glowing red, ready to take on deep luster over years of brewing.

Master potter Zhu Huan brings an incredibly soft organic feeling to the Xi Shi form. The Xi Shi is always rounded, but few artists capture the smoothness of transition from body to spout that a Xi Shi deserves, or the the yielding quality of a ball shape being drawn earthwards. Zhu Huan brings meticulous craft to her Xi Shi to give a feeling of complete grace- a teapot ready to welcome any tea with a feeling of genuine hospitality conveyed in its form. The exquisite aged Zi Ni clay contributes to this feeling with its soft mottling, ready to take on even more patina over a lifetime of brewing.

The Shi Piao in all its glory; a heightened drama, a stark presence, a geometric inevitability. Master potter Zhu Huan brings all of her craft to bear in this inspired piece. In its lines and the mottling of the spectacular Chen Pi Sha Ni clay, this Shi Piao is a conversation between clay as yielding boundless form and clay as unyielding rock. This dramatic tension plays out in the almost “hewn” calligraphic bamboo against the smooth buffed clay, and the curves against the geometry of the triangular form. This masterwork is ready to take on deeper luster and patina over a lifetime of use.

The Shi Piao in all its glory; a heightened drama, a stark presence, a geometric inevitability. Master potter Zhu Huan brings all of her craft to bear in this inspired piece. In its lines and the mottling of the spectacular Zi Ni clay, this Shi Piao is a conversation between clay as yielding boundless form and clay as unyielding rock. This masterwork is ready to take on deeper luster and patina over a lifetime of use.

This stunning Duan Ni teapot is part of Lai Xiaohong’s award-winning masterwork series combining the strength and elegance of classic form seamlessly with natural detail. The craft and time required to form a pot that transitions so perfectly between stark and clean abstraction to elegant touches of bamboo tests Lai Xiaohong’s skill and demands many dozens more hours of work to execute with her level of effortlessness.  Jing Song or “Sturdy Pine” captures the strength of an ancient pine tree as it twists and reaches upwards, Knots and burls tell a story of the tree’s life, while the underside reveals sculpting lines that all come to a centerpoint like the rings of a tree. Delicate moss clings to the side of the pine tree body, a testament to its strength and shelter. The whole pot comes together to give a sense of time, history and strength fitting as tribute to a great old pine tree.

National Master Potter Tang Xianwu is famous for the elegance and grace with which she executes incredibly difficult to sculpt forms like this one. The hand smoothing and mathematical precision required to transition between teapot body facets so flawlessly hint at the incredible artist behind this perfect form, inspired by the xiao jin gua, the gourd form bound by rope to create beautiful patterns- a collaboration between human craft and the organic happenstance of nature, just like a perfect teapot.

This teapot’s name “Wei Miao Wei Xiao” loosely translated to “reflecting on the sublime,” a fitting name for a piece like this. In the sublime is something unknowable, something organic and real that we see through the lens of beauty and awe. The organic inspiration of the form and the incredible fired clay are certainly reflected through a lens of beauty in this masterwork.

Tang Xianwu has gained steady fame and accolades over the years, winning awards at every competition, so we are excited to still be able to offer her work due to a long working relationship. The pictures speak for themselves showing off the perfect elegance of this piece, the way the facets gather together on the bottom of the pot and flow all the way up to the lid handle. Don’t miss the generous hand-built strainer in the pot body, or the exquisite details like the lines between each facet.

Bamboo is one of the most inspirational and quintessential forms for yixing art- a major part of Yixing and other tea growing regions mountain landscapes, growing out of the same soil that builds teapots and nourishes tea. Tang Xianwu’s personal meditations on the form of bamboo like this one are a big part of what made a name for her as a formidable artist. She combines a time-polished river rock teapot body with bamboo sprouting out to form the pot’s top, spout and handles. The sprouting bamboo has a dynamic energy and vibrance, captured mid-motion; life and beauty from the earth. Tang Xian Wu has gained steady fame and accolades over the years, winning awards at every competition, so we are excited to still be able to offer her work due to a long working relationship. The pictures speak for themselves, showing off the grace and perfection of the whole piece coming together. What the pictures can’t capture is the incredible tactile quality of this piece, the exquisitely smooth surface, the delicate sculptural detail, the perfectly-fitting lid, and the way the Yuan Kuang Qing Duan Ni clay shows depth and mottling in the light. This is a piece that will grow over a lifetime of use, gaining luster and patina with every brew.

Gongfu tea can be a perfect solo companion, helping carve out time in the day to stop and enjoy taste, texture and aroma of fine tea. This set is the perfect size for one, including a fine Ge Song celadon teapot fired in Longquan, the birthplace of celadon craft, a hand thrown hare’s fur Jian Zhan teacup from artist Lin Xi, and a space-effective tea tray to catch any water or tea while you brew.