Sourced from the bench in Liuzhou
These cups began as a request for a tasting vessel small enough for real gongfu concentration rather than comfort. The bench that blows the fluted gaiwans this site is best known for pushed for 25ml instead of the more common 30ml — small enough that a cup empties in two or three sips while the aromatics are still loudest.
Each cup is individually mouth-blown from the same laboratory-grade borosilicate as the bench’s gaiwans, then annealed overnight and fire-polished at the rim for a seamless lip. No mould marks, no seams — a delicate bowl that weighs only 40g per cup. Because the cups are made to the same tight tolerances as the gaiwan line, capacity varies by less than 1ml across the set.
The sign-off on this batch came after a side-by-side session with an aged shēng pǔ’ěr, where the cup’s clarity let the tea’s evolving colour show clearly steep to steep. Like the rest of the Liuzhou line, sets are small and irregular in supply — whatever the workshop bench produces between its main gaiwan runs.