Twelve sets a month from Liuzhou
Gao Lihua works out of the same Yufeng Road shophouse where she blows her signature gaiwans, in Liuzhou, Guangxi. The tasting cup is her own design, developed some years after she returned from her Murano training — she built it for a friend running a small chá shì in Nanning who kept complaining that standard cups either lost aroma at the rim or distorted liquor colour with a faint green tint.
Michael visited the workshop in March 2024 on a swing back from Yunnan. The set caught his attention 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 her gaiwans, so only a handful of sets are finished in any given month — Gao rejects roughly a third for wall-thickness variance she catches by feel alone.
The glass is German borosilicate stock, the same tube she used in her lab days. 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 Gao takes her 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 her bench and this page.