This opinion will undoubtedly strike many readers, and in particular potters, as decidedly bizarre, but I maintain that a tea bowl should be for drinking tea.

I can already hear sputtering and cries of “blasphemy!”, but I believe a tea bowl should enhance the tea, please the tongue, nose, eye, hands, and if at all possible the ears.

The first requisite for a tea bowl should be that it enhances the tea. Make some tea you are familiar with, and pour it into two different cups: different materials, different glazes, different shapes, different sizes: and you should be able to taste the difference immediately. .. if you can’t taste the difference, maybe you don’t need to bother reading this website…

In my experience, materials, the way the bowl is made (pinched better than thrown), the size, the proportions, the thickness, and above all, the glaze, are vital considerations. In thirty years of drinking tea, having used thousands of cups and bowls, I have never found a black glaze that didn’t stultify the tea. I know the Japanese tea ceremony people love black glazed bowls, but the Japanese tea ceremony is more ceremony than tea.

Most wood-fired bowls have to be broken in for an inordinately long time. The exception so far seems to be those fired by 廣興孟丑窯柯老師 Mr Ko of the Mengcho Kiln, Taipei County.

The bowl should fit the hand nicely, with a good heft but not a dead weight. I personally like to make tea bowls that are interesting to hold.

Once the tea is in the bowl, it should flow smoothly over the rim, and the rim should feel nice on the lip. Some potters like to make jagged rims, which may please esthetically, but hardly labially, if you will; in other words, they can’t feel good on your lips. I refuse to turn a bowl around trying to find a spot I can drink from without gashing my lips. The bowl should be better made than that.

For that matter, the tea should flow smoothly out of the bowl. I have seen some bowls 寬腹斂口with much larger stomachs than rims, sort of shaped like a pomegranate. Why make a bowl that doesn’t perform well when with a little effort you could make one that can be drunk from gracefully?

One problem is that many highly skilled potters know zip about tea, and few tea freaks pot. I spent years studying pottery under Teacher 盧展能老師 Lu (of 新店檳榔坑 Betel Hollow, New Store, Taipei County) who also loves his tea. I finally developed several bowls that I felt were good enough to drink out of, and then Teacher got tired of teaching and expelled us all. Those interested may see some here: :

But as 顏炬榮Wayne Ngan (a potter I hold in highest esteem) said, Pottery is to be held, not just seen.

As I have said elsewhere, tea bowls by master potters such as Peter Voulkos are superb specimens of the potter’s art, but I wouldn’t bother to pour tea in one, even on a dare. Why waste good tea? I have seen pots online that are ridiculously priced, but they come with exotic pedigrees, oooh a Japanese potter oooh anagama ooooooh!! Kyoto! Not long ago I was engaged in a sort of discussion concerning the ridiculous prices Japanese potters charge for their wares; I said that something that sells for US$100,000 and more (no joke!) would be considered average in Taiwan, hardly worth a second look, and cost maybe US$100. What I did not say in the resulting discussion (practically a trial for heresy) was that of all the participants in the discussion, I was apparently the only one who was familiar with pottery in Taiwan.

I am writing this piece today on the authority of having been a dedicated tea freak for some thirty years now, having examined Chinese (including Taiwan), Japanese, Korean, and Viet Namese ceramics for a good forty years, have used thousands of tea cups and bowls, and held in my hands and examined many, many more.

A tea bowl should be pleasing not only to look at, but to hold and to drink tea out of. Otherwise, the tea bowl may well go the way of the 韘/she, the thumb ring Chinese archers use to pull the bowstring. Originally of practical use, it became more and more ornate, until you could no more fit a she on your finger than Cinderella’s sisters could wear the glass shoe. If that happens, what are we going to drink tea out of?