Putting the final touches on a pot we had made for dad (Happy fathers’ day!). Since zitao pots shrink up to 20% during firing, it’s often necessary to file down the inside of the lid/lid seat in order to ensure a good fit. This is done using a fine glass powder applied to the lid, then pressed into the pot and ground.

We carried a zitao hu cheng (pot support) that sold very quick. This time around we picked up a few more, all with slight variations. These are a great alternative to a full tea table/tea tray as they allow you to still shower your pot, but take considerably less space.

Just playing with 2 new glass gong dao beis. One rough, one smooth.

A glimpse of a new tea we will be putting out later this year. This is 2006 Ban Zhang that has spent its life here. With just under 1 Jian on hand, this cake is #511 out of 1600 cakes pressed.

New zitao teaware! We felt a bit bad listing so many new pieces and only having a few of each on hand, but hey, it’s a dog eat dog world when it comes to teaware. You need to be quick!

We broke away from our trend of 1 post a day and went for a whopping 2 pictures! Talk about going wild… that’s just because we were so excited about these blue ceramic horses from Jing De Zhen. Each one is an antique piece from the 70s/80s. There are 8 total poses available, however some are hard to come across. We have only a few full sets, which are more expensive than the sum of their parts. We think these are some of the most fantastic tea pets we’ve ever seen though, and can’t wait to share!

One of our unexpected finds when we picked up our zitao was this coffee mug. This endedup being a gift for our sister in law… time will tell whether she will use it for coffee or tea. It would be interesting to see if coffee has the same kind of beneficial interaction with Jinashui zitao as tea does. As for coffee, we’re not absolute about anything, so we still enjoy a good cup of coffee, but don’t expect to see us change our name to Bitterbeans any time too soon.