by AdamMY » Apr 12th, '13, 16:10
I have several thoughts floating around in my head and I will try and make the most sense of them I can in relation to this.
It is no secret that I have a lot of teaware. While I have not spent $500 dollars on a Chashaku, looking at some of my favorite pieces, you really have a sense that you are getting to know the maker when handling these well crafted artisan pieces. Often when I get a new piece of hand made ceramics I really study the piece, look it over, touch it all over, see if my eyes and my hands can help tell me the story of how the piece was made. ( This is kind of reverse engineering of a ceramics piece). There is a nice charm in the pieces that really give you a hint at who the maker was and how he acted in forming the piece that other pieces do not have. All of my chinese teaware lacks this characteristic, but its beauty mostly lies in its near perfect shape form, and appearance. If teaware were people, the near perfect porcelain and yixing pots of china would be the beautiful people, and the hand made ceramics of Japan and Korea are the people with good personality/ character. You can have ones that meet both, or none, just like with people. Though I often prefer good character over pure beauty any day ( maybe that explains my teaware). Pehaps this Chashaku has a way to really show off the artists process so to speak, giving it extra character than those a machine spits out every few minutes.
Though on the other side of things theres always a certain premium market of sorts going on in all aspects of life. Should a baseball card sell for 2 million dollars? (Most people would say no.) But to paraphrase some economics, you can sell anything for what someone is willing to pay for it. A few years ago some store had a bottled iced tea that claimed to be made with some very very special japanese teas, that I think was selling for 1000 USD a bottle ( I think 750ml or 1 liter), in a very fancy bottle. I think the general teachat consensus was we could easily make very good tea, possibly even better tea ourselves at home for a lot less, but that doesn't mean that there isn't someone out there willing to buy that iced tea. I think the internet is an incredible tool for finding things that seem absurd, as to most people a 500 USD Chashaku seems absurd on the face of it, but perhaps if you saw it in person and got to handle it and inspect it, it could suddenly seem like a bargain, instead of outrageous.
. I have done some research and found that there's only in this forum where I could find people that had bought from it. Mostly, I heard that it was unsafe. I want to know more about your experiences in dealing with them and why is it considered as unsafe (it would be better before I got my identity stolen.. 
). Also, do the products they deliver match the ones in their pictures? Any past experience in dealing with rikyucha.com would be welcome. Thank you a lot!
