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gaiwan do not need to look to flowery. need to be comfortable to use. need to make good taste tea. these are good gaiwans:
this is small, about 110ml, bell shape, but my most like. best shape, best material, i use it all the time.this is bowl shape, bigger, about 150 mlthis is tall bowl shape, good as a cup, or for making green tea when steeping more minutesstepped bottom, better weight at bottom, thinner at top, good handling too.another viewpoint of the aboveblue overglaze, bowl shape, 150 ml, lid openblue overglaze, lid on top -
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Thickness difference in a container affects the manner of heat dissipation of the container itself and the content it holds. It is typical that mass-produced gaiwans, including all that I use for general purposes, have a thinner bottom and increasing thickness on the side wall towards the top. That is why the hand-thrown gaiwans are a lot more ideal, but they are way too expensive for daily use for most of us.
Anyway, your sample is illustrative of poor thickness distribution even for a mould cast production. This is likely a result of poor skills and/or management. Having said that, however, a lot of chinaware produced all around the world have the same characteristics.It is likely to affect on the quality of infusion. One way to check differences is to control all other variables and use a few different infusion wares to conduct infusion tests on the same tea. -
I got this one to replace my other gaiwan that broke, so I don’t have any other tea ware to test with. It’s hard to select a good one since I can only find them online and I’ve never seen an online shop tell the thickness.
My old gaiwan was like CHAWANG’s first picture and it was thicker but it was harder to use then this new one. I think because this one is shorter and wider.
Anyway, I’ll have to keep looking for a better one. Thanks for your input Leo.
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After reading Leo’s article about gaiwan, I decided to replace mine by following Leo’s instruction. I bought 2 gaiwans from MingCha the same ones that the Leo mentioned in his article https://www.teaguardian.com/images/gaiwan_pomengrade.jpg and gaiwan_pink.jpg.
I have to say that these gaiwans do a wonderful job. -
@lamppost, I took the liberty of having the two pictures in your links inserted into your post. Hope you don’t mind. Your avatar name reminds me of a song by Simon and Garfunkel 😉
Glad that you are able to get these two designs. They are lovely to use. I thought they should be out of stock already. -
Nifty place, MingCha;I hadn’t heard of them until just now. That’s another place I’ll have to visit when I fly out to HK in a few years.
On the subject of gaiwan, I’ve been meaning to ask about shape. According to the article, the ones shaped like those two in lamppost’s post are great for cups and seem to be associated with green alone (from what I’ve seen here and on another site). But what about the shorter, wider ones? The gaiwan that, until last week or so, I used most often was of the shorter, wider type. Now my specific one is comparatively thick throughout the body – that is, compared to my narrow one. Is this the norm for the wide style gaiwan? Other sites have listed them as being for “Oolong and black” or “For Pu’er”.I used to use it for all my teas and hadn’t noticed anything negative. However it seems the taller, narrower one doesn’t hold heat well enough for pu’erh, while the shorter, thicker (there’s the key) one does. Thinking this would also hold true for black tea, as they use the same temperature water.And what is the association between steeping (specifically) green tea longer in the taller of the above gaiwan? Is it heat retention related?Where does white tea find itself best served?Thinking there are some subtleties yet unknown to me.M. -
traditional bell shape gaiwan good for all teas for all purposes. puer if need long infusion time use thicker material gaiwan, but can be the same bell shape.
mingcha was made by leo many year ago. tea bars and a big shop with big and beautiful yixing tea pot display wall. more beautiful pots than teaware museum. so much enjyment to look at. many young tea masters he trained. some nice girls. i think he left it four or five years ago. -
Before I attended Leo’s tea class I did not understand that the functional aspects of the shape and material in a gaiwan. I had never even thought of that and used to choose a gaiwan according to how I like the look. That was almost 9 years ago. I think he gave Ming Cha to his wife when they divorced or separated. I thought Leo would be doing advertising like before and vanished from the tea world. Now he is alive in tea and teaching us again in Tea Guardian and Tea Hong. :”-) However, this is never like to be in a class with him. Or sitting at the modern style tea bar with him or his mild manner staff. Really miss that…
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bowl shape is even more traditional. i like that even more, but more easy find good bell shape than good bowl shape, especially thin edge is difficult in bowl shape, unless very expensive one. i do not like to use expensive gaiwan every day, because afraid to break.
mingcha not the same now. only some leo design packaging and some leo antique furniture and only a little bit leo tea making style. tea bar idea gone. too many dried flowers and glasses. too pushy sales. too much gimmick -
Ah, so a little like Teavana then :/
Thanks for the inference on the bowl shape. I did notice it had a thicker body and rim than the other ones I had. Loans itself reasonably well to pu’erh, though I haven’t had it in anything other than a ceramic pot (loose) or mug (compressed squares) so maybe in the bigger picture it’s not that great.
The ones above, are they mould made or semi-mould made?M.
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Thanks Leo;
The ones that I purchased from MingCha are handmade. Leo can correct me on this. At the moment, MingCha has few colored gaiwan left.
$46 USD- colored gaiwan (pink) – sold out.$77 USD – painted gaiwan – sold out.
I hope that Leo and his TeaHong team sell some excellent teaware in the future. <font face=”Trebuchet MS, Lucida Grande, Verdana, Tahoma, Arial”></font>
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Congrats on the teaware line launch! I’ll be grabbing some of the small plain white gaiwan sometime soon for my up-and-coming attempts at launching a tea club. How will the line be expanding? I saw a few styles of plain white ones in the first post that I would also like to acquire.
Also, if it’s safe to ask, is user ChaWang involved in this new venture at all? I know in another post he mentioned regretting not having an online outlet.One other question – I noticed in the gaiwans section that every other was marked “tea bowl”. These are broader, shorter styles. Is it inappropriate to refer to these as gaiwan? The description says it can be used as one, but does some design detail or subtlety disqualify them from simply being called “gaiwan”? (the more I know and all that)Thanks (and congrats again!),M. -
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