Show Off Your Pots and Cups VII

[Victoria]

Wow I feel so pathetic next to you expert tea drinkers!
All of you have such beautiful pieces, I'm really jealous. I also have a couple of stainless steel infusers. Which do a crappy job.

Awww as Olivier said, we all started somewhere. I have a Tea Forte cup, I love the design and the bags are just adorable. The tea just isn't that good.

If you have crappy infusers you might start there for the New Year and consider one of these:
http://teasource.com/merchant2/merchant ... t_Count=10
Get the largest size, it fits a regular cup just fine and gives the leaves a bit more room. You might try some of their teas, while you are at it. hehehe

Olivier - nice Chataku!!! I want!! But then you knew that!
Congrats!

GerTea - You definitely NEED both!

.

[gerTEA]

murrius wrote:

I totally agree about brewing greens in a glass teapot. I love to watch LongJing brew in my glass pot. Thanks for posting the Hario. I completely love it. I've bookmarked the Richmond site and will order one when my current glass teapot breaks. I'm looking forward to it breaking now. I may just throw it off the balcony!

{Sound of glass breaking somewhere in B.C.}

In addition to loving my teapot, I had a great experience with Avenue 18 - I ordered over the phone and spoke with the owner, Ray, who was very friendly/helpful (checked his stockroom to get me the dimensions on the various mesh infuser baskets, as I was concerned about replacements). Then, when I needed help tracking the order (because the postal service misdirected it), he responded quickly to my email and followed up with a scan of the shipping label. I will probably go out of my way to order from them again because of the nice treatment I received!

They also carry Trendglas/Jena - cool German made glass products (I believe they're made by the company that originated the Janaer brand?)

[Victoria]

Yeah good customer service makes a difference.
I'm tempted, but what I have works fine.
I'm trying to be better.

By the way -
the New Mexico Tea Company just listed some beautiful tea trays:

http://www.nmteaco.com/Teaware_c_12.html

[gerTEA]

I had to look up chataku to confirm it's what it looks like - a saucer/plate to hold a handleless tea cup, which according to my references is for more formal tea occasions (thanks, Victoria, for that learning opportunity!) So, I thought I'd share a couple Victorian English equivalents from my transferware inventory.

The first is a handleless tea cup with a deep saucer. The second is called simply a 'cup plate.' The Asian-inspired pattern is "Florilla" by Staffordshire potter Edward Challinor, c 1842-67. I love this pattern!

[Victoria]

Thanks for posting those gerTEA very nice! I have a fondness for transferware myself - especially toile. It is interesting to find many handless cups are out there when you look hard enough.

As you have discovered chataku is Japanese for saucers or coasters. And there is a lot of interest here and at times chataku frenzy ... errr FEVER - Check out this thread:
http://www.teachat.com/viewtopic.php?t= ... ht=chataku

[gerTEA]

Thanks, Victoria - the chataku thread looks great. It's really fun to learn about all these different teawares. The NM Tea Co. trays are gorgeous too. I lived in Albuquerque a number of years ago - wish there had been a cool tea house to hang out in back then!

[Salsero]

Beautiful teaware, gerTEA. Thanks for sharing.

[gingkoseto]

Oh the chataku thread is beautiful! So are the new ones of olivierco!

[Victoria]

By the way DharmaCrafts.com has the Cherry Bark chataku on sale:
http://www.dharmacrafts.com/106xBDxBD/2 ... set-2.html

I know several people have purchased from here.

[chamekke]

Olivier: Very nice chataku! Which cup or yunomi have you tried these with?

iannon: I like your wares, especially the whitish cup on the left. It's lovely. Great canisters, too. The muted earth tones of your collection are very harmonious and appealing.

gerTEA: Terrific transferware set. I really like the way that the oxblood trim complements the robins-egg-blue flowers (peonies?). And those little dabs of goldenrod. Really unusual and attractive.

One of these days I must post some of the teawares I've received over the past few weeks. It's been ages since I got my camera out. Bad me

[gerTEA]

gerTEA: Terrific transferware set. I really like the way that the oxblood trim complements the robins-egg-blue flowers (peonies?). And those little dabs of goldenrod. Really unusual and attractive.

One of these days I must post some of the teawares I've received over the past few weeks. It's been ages since I got my camera out. Bad me

Yes, I believe they are peonies... I have quite a few pieces in this pattern, and they are indeed lovely to look at. I have other handleless cups/saucers, but I thought the 'Chinoserie' decoration on these was particularly suited to my fellow teachatters

When you get that camera out, please do post *your* teawares - it's fun having a look at what's out there!

[Victoria]

Speaking of handleless cups - I have to post my eBay win - This is a Japanese tea cup set made by Limoges in the most delicate white porcelain. This is the eBay picture, which doesn't do it much justice!

[odarwin]

here are my new pots

this is from jing tea shop...
the lid is a bit tight and has a "choke point" in one spot of the cover when i turn and twist the lid... this is normal in yi xings i think but mine is a bit tighter than usual... a few weeks of use and twisting and turning the lid will loosen the lid a bit. overall the clay looks very nice. in my opinion, clay seems of mid to high quality, but im not sure. i think with pu erh, this will gain a darker deeper red color over time. clay is xiao hong ni.



this is from a shop in taobao...
i took a dive and tried it out. i would say that the picture from the taobao site looks better than the actual pot. i think from the packaging of the pot, its regular yi xing product... done by an artist with the typical brochure and certificate... (which to my opinion means really nothing but marketing hype etc...) clay i think is so so... as i have been warned by someone also in this forum... same artist, same clay, same pot, a bit different in style. clay is apparently di cao qing according to the site, but i think this is a misrepresented pot and do think that its just ordinary zi ni pot.



in my opinionl... i find the pot from jing to be really good for the price...
as for taobao, i think they are of the same quality as YS pots...



happy new year!
-darwin

[gingkoseto]

odarwin, are your taobao pots a lot less expensive than YS pots, or just a bit less expensive? I recently got a few pots from taobao too. 2 of them are both around $30. But one of them I think is better made than the other. I am not good at judging quality, but one of them is definitely more seriously made, with better details. I guess many authors who sell 100-200rmb pots, they can make better pots if they want to, but probably they are too busy making tons of pots every month and lose the spirit of work

All of them look very pretty! Though I know what you mean taobao photos could be much better than the real pot And nowadays whatever "ni" the seller say it is, we had better assume it's just ordinary "ni", nothing fancy, and judge the price based on that. That's assuming the seller is noble enough not to sell any bad "ni"

[odarwin]

gingko...

the taobao pots i got are a little more expensive than YS... about 10 usd or so...

i took some advice before buying from taobao... some questions on clay etc...
of course for 300-400 rmb, you cant expect to get good clay and pure handmade pot... but i do think that the 2 shui pings i got from taobao is so so to ok quality clay... i think that it might show a blush quite fast, and the surface as is, is already a bit smooth... only downside i think is the depth of color... the picture appears darker than the actual color, hoping that with shou pu erh, its gonna gain deeper color too!

as for your "bad ni" comment... i do agree with that, but with a small difference...
for me, there really is no bad ni... after all its still clay... just dont mess with adding harmful chemicals!!!

-darwin