Sourced from a Fujian woodturner
On a sourcing trip through Fujian in early spring, Michael Zhan veered off the tea highway to visit a woodturner he’d heard about from a pu-erh producer in Yunnan. The atelier sat at the edge of a bamboo grove near Wuyishan, a place where the smell of fresh-cut wood mixed with the low hum of a lathe. The craftsman, a third-generation woodworker, had started making tea tools only a decade ago, after noticing that tea enthusiasts often improvised lid rests from coasters or discarded pottery shards. He wanted something more intentional — soft, silent, and made from the same cherry trees that shaded the local tea gardens. Each half-moon rest begins as a branch cut during the dormant season, when the sap is low and the grain stable. It is turned green, then air-dried for at least three months before a final shaping and finishing with food-safe camellia oil. Michael selected a small batch of eighteen rests, drawn to the way the wood carried the light — warm amber heartwood with a thin rim of paler sapwood on some pieces. The story fits the tea.toys ethos: small, handmade objects that earn their place on the working tray and grow more beautiful with use.