Baby Seal Tea Pet — Handmade Yixing Clay

A white baby seal, flopped on its belly with a faintly worried look. It's a tea pet (茶宠, cha chong): a small unglazed clay figure that lives on your tea tray and gets "fed" with leftover tea. Each time you brew, pour a little spent tea over it. The bare clay soaks it in, and with weeks of tea sessions the surface slowly deepens in colour and picks up a soft sheen. Being so pale, this one shows its tea history more openly than most; the white warms toward ivory and amber wherever the tea settles. It's handmade in Yixing from duanni (段泥), a beige-grey clay in the zisha family, left unglazed so it can drink. Glossy black eyes, dotted whisker marks and a grey-washed tail set off the white body, and the maker's seal is stamped on the base. Tiny iron speckles or small pits in the surface are normal for fired clay. That's the material, not a flaw. Details Size: about 7.7 × 6.6 × 4 cm; weight about 109 g Material: unglazed Yixing duanni clay, handmade (each piece varies slightly) Care: rinse or pour tea over it, brush with a soft tea brush while wet if you like, and let it air dry. No soap. Related Tea Pet collection Baby Penguin Tea Pet, the seal's tray-mate in grey.