What makes a good tea cup?

I was teaching a tea class for a couple of folks as a late Christmas present yesterday and was asked: when I’m at home, what kind of cup do I drink from? What prompted the question was an article that the guest recently read about one of Calgary’s tea shop owners (Ted from Tea Trader) saying he prefers to drink his tea from a fine China mug. My short answer was that I usually drink from the little glass cups for sale on my site because I want to have an equal experience as my customers who are drinking tea with me. I can’t be drinking from something they don’t have access too otherwise my experience wont be relatable. We talked about the value of wine glasses, but when I got into my long answer…

I mentioned that in my mind, the most important aspect of a cup is its ability to frame the tea.

Here’s a comparison: any picture or document can be framed, but there are certainly the wrong frames for the job. It doesn’t make sense to me to put a photograph of the rocky mountains in a thick zebra-stripe frame. It also doesn’t make sense to put the business license of a fine dining restaurant on display in a lego-like multicoloured frame — you don’t need to justify either of those, they’re just examples, this is just opinion, and in my opinion both are ridiculous choices that will detract from the perception/validity of what goes inside the frame.

I went behind the bar and pulled out a cup that I bought to highlight a lapsang souchong tea (The Cauldron) I have. The cup itself looks like it was pulled from a volcano, it’s heavy, bulky, it has pretty round edges. The outside of the cup is a dark brown, with lava-like cracks of glaze, and the interior is all glazed orange with black bands. The smokey red fragrance of the tea seems right at home with this cup. Creatively, I can justify it, and even if someone who was ‘less creatively inclined’ than me drank lapsang souchong from this cup, I believe their experience would be better than with something else. They may never put it to words, it may never be a conscious thought to them, but subconsciously it will be better — somehow, by some small margin. Isn’t that what we should be going for in life? The correct path? Several minuscule improvements will eventually accumulate to a measurable result.

These thoughts are not new, they have been had at least since the Chinese Renaissance in the years between 960 to 1276. You drink from larger heavy, dark, rough stoneware in the winter; while in Spring you drink from dainty, demure, thin, fragile green or white porcelain vessels. Summer colors are the most vivid and can be showcased via enamelled-wares and painted porcelain. While autumn begins to mute towards earth tones and golds.

These are not hard and fast rules, we don’t live in a society that appreciates these things on a general level anymore (maybe we never did) — but there are the aesthetes in every society who will attempt to convince the masses to exit their single-file march along the paved road and walk amongst the grass and flowers. Yes, not everyone is doing it, society can’t function without paved roads. Not everyone is healthy and able to walk in the grass, but when I look over at the perpetual shufflers parallel to me, I wonder why half the people are there. It doesn’t seem healthy to live your life at someone else’s pace, slow down, drink tea.