From gaiwan bench to teapot
Gao Liuzhou is better known on this site for her fluted gaiwans — the twelve pieces a month that leave her shophouse on Yufeng Road in Liuzhou, Guangxi, each signed with a small fired crane at the foot. The teapot is a quieter sideline: a handful of pots blown between gaiwan firings, when a gather of glass is large enough to spare but the session doesn’t call for the flute mould.
She built the 300ml size for herself first — a solitary pot for a single cup, sized so a light green tea has room to unfurl without cooling before the second pour. The strainer is pulled from the same gather as the spout, a fine mesh of glass threads rather than a separate metal fitting, which keeps the whole piece one uninterrupted material from handle to lip.
Every pot is mouth-blown and kiln-annealed for thermal resilience, then signed at the base the way her gaiwans are. Production is small and irregular — whatever her bench has time for between the gaiwan runs that remain her main work — so this size restocks between firings rather than on a fixed schedule.