Japanese Tea Ware

I bought some Japanese tea ware recently.  Some of the tea ware, as you will have noticed from the above pictures, looked appropriate for brewing Chinese teas I am drinking.  I had even purchased a few Japanese  ceramic water jars with covers which I will use to store my tea (I will have a separate blog entry for these jars).  

Why did I buy Japanese tea ware?  They are not that expensive (almost my Japanese purchases were  made through Ebay).  Yes, some of these tea ware are used or old, but  I was intrigued by these stuff I had bought.  Somehow, there is a less 'commercial' feel to these tea ware......and I wanted to 'test' out how these tea ware would perform in a Chinese tea brewing session.

The 1st set above is called Bizen ware.  They are unglazed and looked reddish brown.  Bizen ware is believed to contain a higher amount of iron in the clay, and I believe that they may, like my purion teapot enhance the taste of my Chinese tea.  
(do look out for my future blogs when I try out Chinese tea brewing on these tea ware).  This Bizen set, comes beautifully packed in its own wooden box. The bigger bowl is called a yusamashi, a water bowl which I suspect is used to hold water and added to the 'gaiwan' when brewing Japanese tea.  This set is an old used set, and was informed by my seller as being made by Konishi.

The pair of white teacups in the last few pix are straw-ashed glazed teacups.  They are newly made and produced by Shibuya Deishi.  I liked the look of these cups as the exterior of the teacups resembled the bark of a cherry blossom  tree covered by snow exposing 'bits' of the tree bark.  My seller says such teaware are classified as Hagi ware. 

Time for a cup of tea.