Cups - Jianzhan - Teal Host Cup

This large cup is luxuriously beautiful, making it perfectly host cup, or a cup reserved for a special guest. The technique of Jianzhan dates back to the Song Dynasty, almost a thousand years ago. This art was sadly lost in China for a long time. Luckily, having been previously transmitted to Japan, this glazing technique was returned to China in the 1990's. While each cup is glazed in an identical fashion, the patterns created during the firing process are unique to each cup. There is a saying about Jianzhan: One glaze, a thousand colors. The more these cups are used, the more beautiful and colorful they become. The glaze of Jianzhan is iron-rich, giving the cups a pleasant weight and imparting a metallic sweetness, like the smell of rain, to the tea. It is for this reason that drinking tea out of Jianzhan is frequently said to be good for the blood.