Twelve sets a month from Liuzhou
The cups come out of the same Yufeng Road shophouse that blows the signature gaiwans, in Liuzhou, Guangxi. The tasting cup is the workshop’s own design — built for a small chá shì in Nanning, where standard cups either lost aroma at the rim or distorted liquor colour with a faint green tint.
The workshop was visited in March 2024 on a swing back from Yunnan. The set stood out because of the rim — a subtle inward fold of about three millimetres, lampworked after the cup is blown rather than shaped from the gather. It is slow work, and it competes for bench time with the gaiwans, so only a handful of sets are finished in any given month — roughly a third are rejected for wall-thickness variance caught by feel alone.
The glass is German borosilicate stock, the same tube stock used for laboratory glass. Annealing runs overnight at 565°C in a small kiln behind the bench. Each cup is signed underneath with a tiny etched 高 — visible only at an angle, against the light.
We receive sets in lots of six to eight per shipment. There is no second source. When the workshop takes its summer break in August the next batch lands in October. Pricing reflects the small-batch reality and a fair workshop margin — no middle layer between the workshop bench and this page.