Collection: Fair Cup / Pitchers

Fair cup, ancient Han Chinese drinking porcelain products. In the center of the cup stands an old man or head, the body has a hollow porcelain tube, the tube through the small hole at the bottom of the cup; The upper mouth of the tube is equivalent to the height of the mole (or dragon chin) on the chest of an old man.

The Fair cup is a kind of delicate and special cup made by skilled craftsmen in the "Imperial Ware Factory" set up by the Ming Dynasty government in Jingdezhen.

It is said that the imperial machinery factory spent half a year to make a delicate "nine dragon cups", and the upper capital paid tribute to the emperor. After seeing this, Hongwu Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang loved it very much and often used ancient wine to entertain the minister of civil and military affairs.
At the banquet, Zhu Yuanzhang wanted to reward several confidant ministers with a little more wine to drink, so he specially ordered the royal wine of these ministers to be filled, and the wine glasses of other ministers were only less
Measure the wine. But when it came to drinking, the other ministers were happy to drink wine, and the ministers who were "special care" had no wine in the glass, which was very embarrassing. Investigate the reason, Zhu Yuanzhang only knew that the original nine dragon cup made a special method, used to hold wine, can only be shallow flat, can not be too full, otherwise the wine in the cup all missed, not a drop left. Zhu Yuanzhang felt that the nine dragon cup wine is very fair, so named it "fair cup". The content of water, water, greedy. The allusion of "fair cup" tells people that doing things must be fair, and people can not be insatiable.
The fair cup we use to make tea today was originally called a tea cup. However, because it is mainly used for even tea and average tea, it also has the name of "fair cup", but the name of "tea cup" is gradually used less and forgotten.