From Handan with care
Sandry Law spent a quiet autumn week in Handan, the historic glass-making hub of Hebei, walking among small workshops that still blow glass by mouth. He was looking for a tasting cup that would disappear from the drinker’s attention — no seam, no distorting curve, just a silent vessel that could hold 50 ml without stealing the show. In a family studio run by Master Zhang, third generation of furnace tenders, he found a set of six that felt right from the first pour.
The Zhang family works with a borosilicate recipe refined over three decades, balancing thermal tolerance with startling transparency. Each cup is gathered, blown, trimmed and annealed over two days — the slow cooling locks out internal stress so the glass can handle near-boiling water without cracking. The 50 ml size came after weeks of testing with different gongfu setups: four people at a table, each cup holding exactly one generous sip, showing the tea’s colour as an uninterrupted column of light.
What separates these cups from typical factory glass is the rim. Sandry insisted on a polished, rolled lip that feels weightless on the tongue and doesn’t trap a single drop. With six in a set, a full session unfolds visually: from the first pale infusion to the deeper amber of later steeps, each pour tells its own story. This is glassware made not just to be looked at, but to make the tea the main event.