What is a tea figurine?

A tea figurine is a small sculpture that you pour hot water over (used to rinse teaware) as well as leftover tea from your infusions. In tea culture, they hold not only aesthetic value but also a deeper conceptual meaning — they act as an artifact for communicating with the otherworld. That’s why they also have an informal name: tea spirits.

What is a tea figurine for?

To give the spirits something to drink. Just kidding! Well… not really.

How do you use it properly?

You don’t have to pour tea over the figurine — but sooner or later, you’ll want to. When that moment comes, just do it. Whether you generously drench the tea spirit or lightly sprinkle it is entirely up to you. There are no strict rules — feel free to explore different ways of interacting with it.

Why are your tea figurines better than Chinese ones?

Because they are truly handmade. Most Chinese tea figurines are cheap because they are mass-produced and coated with the simplest, most basic glazes. We chose the opposite path.

Who made this tea figurine and how?

Tea spirits are complex, so we create them together — Illia and Anton. Every piece is fully handmade, from sculpting to glazing. The entire process takes 1 to 2 months, including drying, double firing, and finishing (texturing and sanding).

Will it break during delivery?

We pack every order as securely as possible — safe delivery is our responsibility. If anything gets damaged due to unforeseen circumstances, it becomes an issue between us and the shipping provider, as all parcels are fully insured. The customer bears no financial risk. That said, we honestly don’t remember the last time anything was broken in transit.

What gift do you include with the order?

With every tea figurine, we include a home clay workshop kit: a piece of sculpting clay and a detailed laminated guide on how to shape, texture, dry, and generally work with clay. We do this so you can personally connect with the material your piece is made from.

TEA PET VOLCANO FLOWER

Why do we need handmade tea figurines at all?

Well, first of all, we need tea figurines for the same non-obvious reason that we need flowers in a vase or a beautiful grille on a car bumper. And, we also need tea toys for spirits, especially tea deities! Because it is they that we will eat when we pour the first spill onto the sculpture, the same one that washes the tea leaves or the remains of some other spill. Yes, yes, this is one of the main procedures that you will carry out with your figurine for tea ceremonies, because pouring tea onto it, pouring it to the spirits through your figurine will be the main purpose of the cha shen on your chaban.

Tea spirit or tea toy: which is correct?

The literal translation of cha shen still sounds like a tea spirit, but call them whatever you want, but it is better by name. Come up with at least some name (if you can’t come up with a suitable one), respect your tea spirit on the chaban. In general, tea sets for ceremonies loves an individual attitude towards itself.

What is unique about your tea figurines?

Our tea cups are tea sculptures, they are special precisely in their shape and concepts. We wanted to move away from the Eastern canon in creating tea cups and make tea toys in the Western style, because tea culture is already very actively raging and developing in our European movement. Although we also have a kaonashi from the world of Hayao Miyazaki here, because we could not find it in Ukraine, but we really wanted to make it, because it fits so stylishly into the tea ceremony! Our tea pet “mavka” deserves special attention, it very aesthetically emphasizes the light tea sets on the board. However, to be honest, it is impossible to find a more difficult figurine for tea ceremonies than a lava flower, it was very difficult and nerve-wracking to make even a few such pieces, but the result, as you can see, turned out to be simply “wow”. It should also be noted that our figurines are larger and more expressive in color than Chinese ones, this will not be difficult to see when comparing. Made entirely by hand from Ukrainian clay and German glazes, our tea figurines reveal crazy designs, not in the traditional Eastern manner, but in a more Western, juicy style.

Tea figurines