Ceramic Tea Boat / Tea Tray - Metal Lid, Drainage Function

What is a Tea Boat?

A tea boat is a pot stand or tray for displaying your teapot or cups. Tea boats also have a drainage function for collection tea liquid while you're brewing tea. This is handy, especially when you have to rinse tea or pour tea over a teapot during a gongfu tea session.

Traditionally, Chinese gongfu brewing sessions are generally performed on very large wooden trays. While this may look spectacular, many tea lovers don’t have sufficient space for such a large item at home. As a result, modern small trays are often used as an alternative, which are also known as a ‘tea boat’.

Why a Tea Boat is Needed

When you make traditional Chinese tea based on the gongfu method, one requires a tray that can catch spilled tea. This can be for instance, when you pour hot water over your teapot to isolate heat or when you want to scrape away the tea scum from the surface using the lid.

Requires less space

A tray is also convenient when you’ve just started practicing gongfu brewing, to catch the tea that you might spill while practicing. Hence, a tea boat is a central piece for modern gongfu brewing. If you don’t have a large tea tray simply because of a lack of space, a tea boat may be the perfect solution! Modern tea trays are smaller and more affordable at the same time.

What is Tai Hu Stone?

Taihu stone is a kind of porous lime stone formed at the Tai Lake (Taihu) foot of the Dongting mountain. To allow such stone to form, limestones are perforated with holes before they are immersed in the lake.

When immersed, the stones are exposed to the erosive effect of the water. After years of erosion, the stone and the holes appear to be naturally formed. Due to the beauty of the stones, they are also called rare stones (gongshi) or fantastic stones (guaishi).

They can be often found in traditional Chinese gardens. Especially in the gardens of the city of Suzhou, you may appreciate many of such stones.

As Tai Lake, Dongding Mountain, is also the home of one of China’s most famous teas: Bi Luo Chun. It’s common for tea lovers to enjoy their local tea while appreciating the beautiful appearance of Taihu stones in a garden. Hence, the idea of depicting Taihu stone on this wonderful tea tray.

Due to its beauty, many historical Chinese poets have written poems about Tai Hu stone. Perhaps, we'll translate and share some of these poems in the future through our blog and social media.