History of Ceramic and Porcelain Teaware（1）

[West Green]

When did humans start drinking tea with ceramic tea sets? Who was the first human to drink tea from a ceramic tea set? I'm afraid it's hard to know who, but we do know when probably.

About 10,000 years ago, people invented pottery containers to hold food and water, especially water. Compare that to animal meat, which you can eat with your hands. But water can't do without a container. How did human beings make pottery container?

Like many great inventions, it may have started by accident. Thousands of years ago, when primitive humans were using fire, the clay next to the fire became hardened and became very hard. So they consciously began to use clay to make pottery.

Pottery began to hold water as a container, which was a great revolution. Today we discuss at teachat about all kinds of teapots (e.g. this collection shows https://truetealife.com/collections/teapot) and tea sets. Everything started from the accidental discovery of primitive people in the primemal forest, and gradually evolved into pottery products made consciously.

Although pottery was still humble compared with the various exquisite porcelain tea sets later, it was much more practical and exquisite than the containers made of animal skins and branches used by humans before. But pottery has its drawback. It's not fired at high enough temperature, so it's fragile. And the water absorption is relatively strong, which is a big defect for tea ware.

Let's see this pottory pot below, it's called 'Painted pottery vase with vortex pattern tip bottom'. This is a wonderful water vessel, put it in the water, it will float when the water is full. It's not just that people were so smart thousands of years ago, but it's also pretty, isn't it?

Painted pottery vase with vortex pattern tip bottom.png

To be continued.

[12Tea]

Wonderful article, I can't look forward to part to. Though I know a lot about ceramics, I never heard of a floating pot.