A Teapot for the Office

For years I have resisted admitting it, but at last I must confess: I am a teapot collector.

I have allowed myself to buy my last three teapots only because I have promised myself that would be the last teapot I ever buy. Personally I respect my teapots so much, that leaving them unused makes me really sad. For this reason I have not wanted to buy teapots that will only gather dust in my cupboard.

But... Once again I relapsed and bought a new teapot, which makes me doubt my intentions about keeping and raising teapots. I do have real use for this piece, however. These days I spend most of my time in an office, and naturally that makes the office the place I drink most of my tea in.

For a long time I used just a metal strainer and a large tea cup to brew my tea in the office. This was easy, but I wanted to get rid of the metal strainer. Next I proceeded to drink tea in a Chinese glass thermos infuser, which was really handy actually. I could infuse the leaves directly in the thermos and drink it while it was infusing.

In the long run I started to regard using glass tea ware as a waste of time. Because I spended most of my time in the office and drank most of my tea in there, why would I not purchase a teapot suitable for office tea, that could gather patina during my work time?

The teapot I ended up buying is Bizen ware from Japan. The clay is heavy, hard, and unglazed. Bizen ware is wood-fired for days, which leads to unique colouring in the clay.

This clay was made by an award winning ceramist Takashi Saito, and it was purchased from Artistic Nippon. In the first three infusions, the pot left an unpleasant clay odour in my tea, but once I left some 2010 Lao Cong Shui Xian from Jadepisara (now Teatrail), the prolem was solved. I am eagerly waiting to see how the teapot will develop during the next months and years when I have properly braked in the pot.

The volume of the teapot is about 160ml. It is my biggest teapot, but for office use I wanted a bigger pot, because you cannot work at the computer and gongfu at the same time!

For the teapot, I bought this beautiful Japanese tea cup made by Ito Shiho. The volume is about 180ml, which is perfect with the teapot.

P.S. I forgot my email and password for my last blog Teekannu (in Finnish), so I started a new one. I will update the most important posts here when I have the time!