Tea ware

Making tea comes with a little waiting built in. Water heats, leaves open, and for about two minutes your hands are free.

The pieces here are made for those two minutes. Ash glaze that ran and stopped where the kiln decided. Unglazed yakishime that deepens a little more each year you use it. And a Meiji-era Kutani cup, broken and rejoined in gold a century ago, still holding tea. Every one of them took time to make.

Which pot suits which tea is set out in kyusu, houhin and dobin compared. A side-handled kyusu is for sencha, a houhin for gyokuro brewed at low temperature, a dobin for roasted teas. Unglazed pots are porous, so keeping one pot to one tea is how the flavour builds. The gold seams on the Kutani cup are kintsugi, a repair meant to be seen.