How many?

[saxon75]

I recently had a birthday and thus have some birthday money to spend. I had been planning to use some or all of it to buy tea and teaware, which got me to thinking about what I want and what I need in terms of teapots. There are a whole bunch of teapots that I want, but it strikes me that I don't really know why I want them, other than that I just do. It would be nice to have a porcelain kyusu or hohin so that I could have a convenient way of making hojicha or genmaicha without worrying about messing up my sencha sessions, but other than that I'm more or less covered with what I already have.

So, I'm curious: how many teapots do you have, and how many do you use regularly? And what do you use them for? That is, what types of tea, occasions, or other criteria determine which teapot you use?

Here's what I have:

• A 24-oz white bone china Chatsford pot, which I mostly use for making black breakfast blends, and occasionally lao cha tou when I'm feeling lazy.
• A cheap, mass-produced, 250-ml clay kyusu, with obi-ame screen, which I use for sencha.
• A 180-ml, plain white, bone china gaiwan, which I use for pretty much everything except sencha and breakfast tea (e.g. shengcha, shoucha, hongcha, Chinese greens, and all manner of oolong).
• A 16-oz porcelain infuser mug which I use at the office, mainly for Chinese greens and light-roasted oolongs, occasionally hongcha.

I use all of them quite frequently, at least three or four times a week each, if not daily.

[debunix]

I have enjoyed a lot of lovely tea brewed in an under-10$ plastic Kamjove brewing device, but in the grip of a moderate case of Teaware Acquisition Disorder (TAD) I have acquired a more than absolutely necessary collection of teawares. I have items with duplicate functions because I brew tea in 2 different offices, and if I find myself wishing for something just a little different, that becomes an excuse for a quest to find just the right thing.

In one office, where I have very limited space to store my things between visits, I get by with a single glazed porcelain teapot, a Hagi teacup, water pitcher, and porcelain tea tray--the simple glazed pot works for any tea. In my primary office, I've recently lost access to the kitchenette that made cleaning my teawares quick and easy, so I sought a larger glazed shiboridashi as being easy to rinse and wipe clean in the office between brews, without needing a trip to the sink. But I also keep an unglazed kyusu for green tea sessions, and a small 'yixing' pot only for Dan Congs, and various other vessels so that I can brew 2-4 teas a day and make one trip daily to the sink for final cleaning. So.....it depends on what you brew and where you brew and what access you have to other things, as well as what you want from your teas.

[yalokinh]

hmm, I use a small yixing for old puer, and a petr novak teapot for new puer, I have a chaozhou teapot for dan congs, everything else gets the gaiwan treatment. so 4 in total

[NPE]

Oops, it seems that I am firmly in the grip of over-the-top TAD... Last count with everything included ('normal' teapots, kyusus, shiboridashis, hohins and gaiwans) was at the end of fifty. However: I use them all as I have developed a nice rotating system and I have two or more tea sessions every day, each time with different teaware. I have also been found in my tea corner with a wide grin on my face, just admiring my collection. By far the biggest chunk of my teaware has been made by Andrzej Bero and Petr Novak, with a bit of Hong Seong-il, Bill Perrine, Chris Chaney, Lin's Ceramics, some nice tokoname and a couple of Yixing (of which I currently only think the one from EoT is 'real') to complete the list. An attempt to add some beauties from Shawn McGuire has been cruelly squashed - literally - by someone in the postal service. I only hope that my more recent order from him has better luck.
Oh, I also do not have any intention of slowing down. I might have to devise a better rotating system and maybe get rid of non-essential items like furniture and clothes but I am happy

[bagua7]

If I were offered the opportunity of trading all my 29 Yixings for one Zhao Zhuang zhu ni pot 100mL or so (XIX century preferably), I would do so in the blink of an eye and with no regrets.

The older the pot the better, clay in the old days wasn't mixed as today's material.

[debunix]

Last count with everything included ('normal' teapots, kyusus, shiboridashis, hohins and gaiwans) was at the end of fifty.

Hard to know where to start counting: if I count the cheap goldfish-painted gaiwans used for uniformity during comparative tastings, and the brew-mugs, and those stored for occasional use in various locales (satellite office, Mom's house), I'm probably not much below that number....

[saxon75]

Well, my collection is going to nearly double in the next couple of weeks. I hope that this represents a new steady state rather than the initial phase of a virulent TAD.

[kikula]

saxon, I'm not sure if it's a felicitous cusp or the tipping point of a slippery slope, but me too.
I just pasted this at the top of my burgeoning list of Desired Tea Objects:

If you have one pot
And can make your tea in it
That will do quite well.
How much does he lack himself
Who must have a lot of things?
Sen no Rikyu 1522-91

But terrible old Buddhists like me have also been known to collect many bits of wise advice, set them around, look at them a lot, add more...

This fever is coincident with my recent discovery of TeaChat. I see that there's a sort of teapot AA thing going over there in another thread.
I'm not going there until I've hit rock bottom, I can tell.

[saxon75]

A few days after my last post I purchased a 250-ml Nosaka pot, a 250-ml Masaki Tachi banko kyusu, and a 150-ml porcelain hohin. I still want to pick up a small-ish glass teapot for the office, but other than that I think I'm going to be satisfied for the time being.