The history of tea bowls

The earliest tea set evolved from wine vessels, water vessels and tableware. From the ear cups of "Xing Jun wine" unearthed in Mawangdui, we can know that the containers of "cups" were divided into different parts at that time, although they were exactly the same in shape on the Internet. So some people infer that there must have been a cup specially used for drinking tea at that time. In addition, from the later forms of tea sets, it can be concluded that early drinking utensils and food were used as tea sets. Legend has it that in Xuanzong of Tang Dynasty, a woman liked to drink tea, but she was afraid that the tea bowl would be very hot, so she put it on a plate. In order to prevent the tea bowl from slipping, she glued it with wax oil. Later, someone made this idea into a tea bowl with a tray. This legend shows the age when there were tea bowls with trays, and also shows whether there were tea bowls with trays at that time. This kind of tea bowl with tray developed into a popular bowl-covering tea in Ming and Qing Dynasties.

Early tea bowls were popular with Yue Di porcelain. In Wenzhou, eastern and southeastern Zhejiang are the main producing areas of porcelain in the Western Jin Dynasty, and celadon is the main product. Jin people's admiration for porcelain tea sets had a great influence on later generations, and celadon was the mainstream of tea sets for a long time. Lu Yu explained why Yuezhou porcelain tea set should be respected from the relationship between tea bowl and brown color. The color of tea soup in Tang Dynasty is yellow. If white porcelain, yellow porcelain and brown porcelain are used, the tea soup will have bad visual effects of red, purple and black, while the tea soup in the celadon bowl is green and looks better. During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the way of offering tea and ordering tea became the mainstream, but the way of frying tea still existed among the people, using tea bowls in the Tang Dynasty style, which naturally had room for survival.

The tea soup in Song Dynasty was white, and the tea bowls used changed accordingly. The black, brown and yellow tea bowls used by people in the Tang Dynasty all became excellent ones. This kind of dark tea bowl can set off the whiteness of tea soup, while the celadon tea bowl respected in the Tang Dynasty is much worse. Although it is still used in many places, it is obviously not a teacup for ordering tea.

In addition to the traditional tea bowls, there were many glazed and painted tea sets in Ming Dynasty, among which the blue-and-white porcelain, white porcelain and painted tea sets fired in Jingdezhen during Yongle period of Ming Dynasty were the most prominent, and the technology reached its peak. Colored porcelain technology has brought great changes to the style of tea sets. It can be said that colored porcelain tea bowls are a major feature of Ming and Qing tea sets.