Vintage & Rare
Thingswithapast
A small, rotating cabinet of vintage teaware — cups, pots and trays that have already lived one life and are ready for another.
Why vintage
New teaware is made to look perfect. Vintage teaware is made honest by use — a soft patina on the clay, a glaze that crazed over decades, a chip we chose to keep. These objects carry the hands that made them and the tea that seasoned them. We hunt them down one at a time; when a piece is gone, it is gone.
A short glossary
- Patina 包浆
- The soft sheen clay and stone earn from years of tea and touch. Never faked, only earned.
- Celadon 青瓷
- Jade-green glazed porcelain, prized since the Song dynasty for the way it colours the liquor.
- Zisha 紫砂
- Yixing purple-sand clay. Porous, unglazed, and said to remember every tea brewed in it.
- Crazing 开片
- The fine web of cracks in an aged glaze — a flaw on new ware, a signature on old.
1970 — 1989
Cups from the 70s–80s
A quiet run of Chinese porcelain cups from the 1970s and 80s — factory-made, hand-finished, and softened by forty years. Small crazing, warm glaze, the odd honest chip. Rare, imperfect, quietly beautiful.
