Teaware Choices

I feel one of the things people associate with me and tea is my teaware, and while I have spent more than I probably should have, I feel it makes the sessions better in an almost intangible way.  If you are into eastern mysticism they can often try and explain that away using energies and what not of the various pieces.  What I am about to say does not conflict with that it is more of just an alternate way to view that principle.

I have found that when making tea, and drinking tea, that so many of our senses are occupied it is hard to give each one all the time it deserves.  Yet they are all busy sending all sorts of information to our brains which it then interprets.  As such the senses that are often over looked such as feel, and to a certain extent sight (on the teaware itself, not the tea), contribute far more than we imagine to the tea session. This is my explanation when people say simply having a nicer item sitting beneath the teapot or the teacup makes the tea taste better, when it has no contact with the tea itself.

I recently bought the "antique" porcelain cup pictured above, and while I am not 100% sure of its provenance, it feels nice both in hand and on the lips, and looks nice with tea in it, when the tea is bright enough you can just make out the detail of the piece beneath the tea. In the first session tea did not taste quite right, I think because I was mentally worried I did not thoroughly clean it even though when I forced myself to just consider water poured in and consumed the water itself didn't taste bad.  Hopefully that goes away with time, but that is another interesting thing to consider, how your mental shift towards a particular piece alters how tea tastes in it.

If you are worried you are going to break the piece, worried that the piece is dirty, you just plain are not fond of the piece, etc. Then tea will likely not taste that great when you use that piece. Might actually be a weird backwards way of why some of the most rustic tea bowls in ancient times were the most prized because "they made good tea" the tea makers did not really worry about their heads if the bowl happened to be damaged.

On the other side if there are things you absolutely love about the piece tea may taste better in them. Weather it is how the piece fits into your hand and is so easy to cradle, or if its as simple as the wonderful feeling of the clay foot, that while you hold the cup pondering the tea you are drinking,  you graze your pinky across the foot and enjoy the feeling.  Our relationship with our teaware is easily just as complicated, if not more complicated as our relationship with our tea, and then of course you need to consider their relationship with each other.