Antique Cups

These amazing cups are from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). In our experience, antique cups make much better tea. The quality of the porcelain, wood firing and simple spirit of use over time enhance one’s tea greatly. We invite you to experiment with these cups versus modern ones. We think you also will find that they improve your tea. These were originally wine cups, though they have most likely been used for tea for at least decades now. They are simple, ordinary cups, which were used by everyday people like us, which we feel better expresses the spirit of tea. As a result, they are wabi, which means imperfect. We will do our best to match the cups in sets of five, which is the traditional number of a set of cups, but there will be some variation in size. Also, these cups are very old, so they all have spots, chips and sometimes even hairline cracks (none are leaking though). We hope that like us you will not only accept the “blemishes” of time, but celebrate them for what they are: the wear and tear of daily use over centuries, which is a large part of the spirit of these cups!

These cups hold approximately 30-40ml though the size of each cup will vary slightly.