A tea master shaped by molten sand
Gao Liuzhou was born in the glass-making city of Liuzhou, Guangxi — a place where the river carries silica and the air hums with the heat of kilns. His grandfather worked in a state glass factory, shaping laboratory glassware and later household wares. Young Gao did not see tea in the glass at first; he saw only utility.
But when a family friend demonstrated a gōngfū chá ceremony in the late 1990s, using a small glass pitcher to observe the change of tea soup, something shifted. The fragile vessel became a lens — a way to watch water and leaf converse. Gao enrolled in tea-mastery courses in Guilin, then in Guangdong, where he studied under several mentors and learned that the water’s path from heat source to cup is the spine of any session.
He spent years working in teahouses and travelling to tea-producing regions, tasting hundreds of teas and observing how the subtle differences in water temperature, mineral content, and vessel material shaped each brew. He noticed that glass pitchers and kettles — when well-made — gave the tea no place to hide. The transparency imposed honesty. Glass did not round edges the way Yixing clay could; it amplified every flaw until the brewer learned to compensate with precision.
That insight brought him back to Liuzhou. He reconnected with a small independent glassblower who had left the factory system to pursue hand-blown high-borosilicate ware. Together they refined a kettle design that could work on stovetop and pour with a clean, controlled stream. Gao Liuzhou tested prototypes across dozens of tea sessions, adjusting the spout angle, the handle balance, and the thickness of the glass to tune the heat-retention curve.
When Teamotea began building the tea.equipment constellation, they asked Gao to lead glass kettle procurement. He now personally visits the workshop each season, selecting the vessels that will carry the constellation’s kettles. His role is not merely commercial — he sees each kettle as a co-author of the tea experience, an invisible participant that must be worthy of the leaves it will welcome.
Today, Gao Liuzhou teaches occasional workshops at tea.school, sharing the interplay of glass, water, and fire with a new generation of tea practitioners. His hands have stirred the water of countless sessions; his eye watches over each kettle that leaves the workshop, ensuring that the first gesture of gongfu — heating water — is made with clarity.
The Liuzhou glass workshop — where sand becomes transparency
Liuzhou sits in the karst landscape of northern Guangxi, a city long associated with glass production due to the purity of its silica deposits along the Liu River. The local sand, tempered with boron and limestone, yields a glass that can withstand rapid temperature shifts — essential for a vessel that moves from open flame to tea table.
The workshop Gao Liuzhou collaborates with is a small family atelier tucked behind the old textile district. Here, the Liuzhou glassblower — a third-generation craftsman named Wei — works with a small team. They use a reclaimed glass furnace, feeding it recycled borosilicate cullet mixed with local raw materials. The blowpipe still spins by hand, and each kettle takes shape from a single gather, no moulds involved.
Gao visits the workshop each spring and autumn, not only to inspect the latest batch but to refine details: the thickness of the wall where it meets the flame, the angle of the pouring spout that must break cleanly without dribbling, and the tactile warmth of the hand-blown handle nub. He and Wei often hold long sessions brewing tea from the kettle itself, testing the pour and the way the glass responds to boiling mineral waters brought from different sources.
This workshop is not open to the public; it remains a quiet source for a handful of teaware shops and now, through Gao Liuzhou, to Teamotea’s constellation of brands. The photo here captures the glow of the melt chamber just before a gather — the moment when sand and fire first promise clarity.