Market: Tea Time
Market: Tea Time
After water, tea is the most frequently consumed drink on earth—no Indian or Egyptian or British day would be complete without it. The Japanese turned the drinking of it—from beautiful ceramic bowls—into an art form. These four contemporary ceramists make vessels worthy of any tea ceremony you’d care to invent.
Photo by Kyle Lee.
Ceramic Meltdown’s Colorblast Cups come in a variety of lively patterns, including ovals, dots, leaves, and this leopard print offering, 4 x 4 x 4 in. A prolific ceramist, proprietor Kyle Lee cofounded BKLYN CLAY and teaches wheel and surface classes at Gasworks NYC, also in Brooklyn. / $80
There’s an elegantly simple teapot and mug-and-saucer combo in Collection 4.5 from Estero, Florida–based Jordan Blankenship of JordanBCeramics. The set, which also includes jars, a coffee pour over, and a juicer, is made from white stoneware glazed in black matte; each component has a beguiling white rim. The setup is modular, and each component can be stacked in any order atop the mug and saucer for storage. Mug measures 4 x 4.5 x 4.5 in. / $55
Photo by Reba Jensen.
Photo by Dan Ohm.
Dan Ohm, the Kansas City, Missouri–based potter and DJ behind Dan Ohm’s Dirt, makes three-piece stoneware tea infusers, 5 x 5 x 4 in., perfect for brewing and sipping a hot cuppa. A basket that can hold loose leaves or bagged tea rests under the lid of a handled mug. The peaceful decorative pattern on the cup evokes the meditative joys of tea drinking. / $60
“There’s a gravity, heft, and coolness to the touch that is unlike the materiality of any other commonly used functional goods,” says Miro Chun of Miro Made This about her smooth, heavy white porcelain teacups, 2.25 x 3.5 x 3.5 in. The Phoenix-based ceramist also collaborates with her mother, Changsoon Oh, an abstract painter, on special runs of painted teacups. / $52
Photo by Miro Chun.
