Thursday TeaDay 1/7/11 First teaware?

[putibungsu]

My first teaware purchase was a yunomi I bought in Tokyo almost 20 years ago, never used it since I left Japan and left it at my parents' house in Indonesia for years. Two year ago when I started drinking Japanese greens again, I brought the cup home and use it every now and then.

O-Cha's organic Kaoru supreme matcha again this morning followed by long jin from Postcard Teas.

[grammyof6]

My first tea set that became my own that I can remember was in 1956. It is a moss rose set that matched my mothers. On the first day of school for my 4 older siblings my mother made my "unhappy but I want to go too" day special by pulling out this set and we had a tea party. My children all shared this set with me as they grew up and my grandchildren have also had several tea times with me using it. Although I now have close to 200 teapots and over 200 tea cups, this set has a place of honor along with one of my mothers favorite cup and saucer sets, my grandmother's cup and teapot, the first cup my husband late husband gave me, and the first teapot my current husband of 14 years gave me on our 1 week anniversary of our first date. Also the first teapot I bought myself was in the mid 60's for my hope chest.
Sorry to ramble on but the question made me smile. Have a great day everyone.

[tortoise]

My first tea set that became my own that I can remember was in 1956. It is a moss rose set that matched my mothers. On the first day of school for my 4 older siblings my mother made my "unhappy but I want to go too" day special by pulling out this set and we had a tea party. My children all shared this set with me as they grew up and my grandchildren have also had several tea times with me using it. Although I now have close to 200 teapots and over 200 tea cups, this set has a place of honor along with one of my mothers favorite cup and saucer sets, my grandmother's cup and teapot, the first cup my husband late husband gave me, and the first teapot my current husband of 14 years gave me on our 1 week anniversary of our first date. Also the first teapot I bought myself was in the mid 60's for my hope chest.
Sorry to ramble on but the question made me smile. Have a great day everyone.

Multi-generational items have a special magic to be sure. I think a very nice blessing to bestow upon any new piece of tea ware would be something like, "may your tea pot out-live you." That guards against premature breakage and insures ( I hope) a legacy gift.

[rhondabee]

My first tea ware were actually gifts to me (in the 1990's), and I still have the pots and cups. I received a Japanese ceramic tea set and a Yixing tea set, plus a plastic Taiwanese gong fu tea brewer. I still use the Japanese cups and keep one of the cups for use at work. Up until recently I still used the plastic Taiwanese gong fu brewer at work. I've since bought a gaiwan for work.

Today savoring some 2010 Winter Da Yu Ling oolong from Floating Leaves Tea. Mmmmm!

[AdamMY]

My first piece of teaware was a Giant ceramic teapot, which I still use occasionally whenever I am making a giant amount of iced tea.

[Amaikokonut]

Technically the first thing I remember buying for tea-brewing was a (rather large, I remember it would not fit into some of my smaller mugs) fine mesh infusion basket. I almost never use it now though, as most of my brewing is done in some vessel or other, and the few times I do need to brew something straight in my mug, I tend to go for large paper filters instead-- one less thing to wash out afterwards!

[Marco]

My first buy has been a cheap and nice Chawan.
I still use it but I am constantly looking at the Artisan postings and the MatchaWan Thread. I need more Chawans

For loose-leaf tea I started brewing in a huge western style glass pot. Pouring gently because I had no filter at all.
It was spelled by a nice little glass pot with filter that I got as present - smashed it about a month ago
And my first direct order included a nice tokoname kyusu and tokoname cup - really great choices 'cause I love both of them and use them a lot. But already had to repair the handle of this kyusu.

ciao
Marco

[Cael]

As silly as it sounds, the first piece of tea ware I bought when I first started to really get into tea was a thermos. It was heaven for me. I loved this thing with everything that I had. I brewed everything and anything in there. More importantly than either of those was the fact that I took it with me everywhere. I would drink three to four of these large thermoses of tea a day. Having that thermos is also what really made tea accessible for me.

[debunix]

Surprise, surprise: during spring cleaning, guess what I found? This was my first teaware, a pot and four cups that I bought 25 years ago. I still have 3 of the cups.


Teaset by debunix, on Flickr