Being curious about cups and stuff, I bought the "exhibition catalog" edition "The Art of Kungfu Tea – Ruoshen Teacup" 《工夫茶: 杯必若深珍藏展》 for RMB 350, because I could not justify dropping RMB 2800+ for the hardcover version. This edition includes a couple of articles and photos of 300+ pieces of porcelain teaware, mostly cups with the occasional small plate or pot. The articles were somewhat disappointing: most are repetitive, pitches for the hardcover book, or its authors. The hardcover edition boasts 600+ pages, 26 (!) expert articles, and glossy paper that I suppose would better do justice to the photos.
The book is all in Chinese, traditional characters, which I can read. If you don't, the August 2022 issue of Tea & Tao (Global Tea Hut yet again) has a special feature on Ruoshen cups. I do not mean (nor would I be able) to do a comprehensive writeup on the topic, but I thought I'd share some takeaways from my reading.
If someone has the hardcover book, I'd very much like to see the full table of contents and hear your opinions. Also, if anyone has any (copies of copies of copies of…) cups in this style, please share!
What exactly is a Ruoshen cup? We are talking about a type of teacup that can be traced back to Minnanese tea culture during the "three reigns" of Kangxi (1661–1722), Yongzheng (1722–1735) and Qianlong (1735–1796) emperors, the heyday of Qing porcelain industry. They were produced by folk (as opposed to official) kilns for the local gentry, and are distinct from export ware aimed at the European and Japanese markets. Southeast Asia got some honest Ruoshen cups, as well as the gongfu tea culture that is in a sense encoded by the teaware.
Cups with the bottom mark "若深珍藏" (Ruoshen Collection) appear sometime in the Kangxi era, but it is not clear who or what "Ruoshen" was. Folklore has it that 李若深 Li Ruoshen was the name of a merchant or his shop who originally produced the cups. According to 翟健民 Di Jianmin in this volume, the earliest mention of them in the literature is in 1851, when Ruoshen was already a household name.
Some "Ruoshen" wares are marked 玩玉 or backdated to Chenghua or Xuande reigns of the Ming dynasty (less copies than spiritual successors to Ming blue and white porcelain). The name is spelled 若琛 Ruochen in some sources, which is a typo. At first, the Ruoshen mark seems to have been used on cups only, but other wares with the mark did appear later. Cups in the Ruoshen style were made until the early Republic period (and presumably copied later).
The chief editor 劉宏杰 Liu Hongjie's article was quite interesting. Liu writes about his experience collecting blue and white teacups between 1994–1997, starting when he was introduced to a shop in Taipei that dealt in Qing teaware. At the time, antique Yixing teapots were already selling like very expensive hot cakes, but few collectors were interested in porcelain teaware. Liu could thus afford to take his pick of the nicest, earliest, Jingdezhen-made cups as shipments arrived from the mainland.
Apparently, most of the shop's stock was unearthed from Qing tombs in 漳浦縣 Zhangpu County in the 1980s and 1990s and shipped to be sold in Taiwan, because there was no expertise or interest left in the mainland. Liu estimates that about 30% of the cups he saw were top-quality wares made in Jingdezhen, while the other 70% came from local Zhangpu kilns (漳州東溪窯) or from Dehua. The Zhangpu and Dehua cups in particular arrived in the hundreds and flew completely below the collectors' radar at that time, selling for NTD 200–300 per piece (in Liu's opinion, a ridiculous price; I haven't got an idea what money was worth then).
While it is barely mentioned in this edition of the book, in July 1990 a gongfu tea set was discovered in Zhangpu in the tomb of 藍國威 Lan Guowei (d. 1758, or Qianlong 23), including four Ruoshen cups (as well as some properly aged tea). It looks like the items are held in Zhangpu County Museum.
I'm attaching photos from the hardcover version, pilfered from the Chinese internet (source), although the quality is not great. In addition, here is Lan Guowei's pot ( and archived).
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What are the characteristics of Jingdezhen-made Ruoshen cups from Kangxi to Qianlong? The cups are small (20–45 ml), thin at the lip, and thick at the bottom. We have already touched on the variety of bottom markings. The blue decoration is closer to Chinese painting than the "lavish" European or "tender-feminine" Japanese export porcelains.
The early cups present a pale blue glaze, that owes to the presence of bivalent (aka. ferrous) iron (Fe2+) in the glaze that turns blue in the reducing atmosphere of the kiln. In the Jiaqing and Daoguang reigns, improved (??) processing gradually resulted in a pure white glaze.
The typical Ruoshen glaze should have a glassy glow and hand feel. Any pinholes are small and deep. Liu describes the glazes at some length, which I think is of limited value because to really know you need to have held the object in your hands. All I can do is to post this approximation of the colour (source: https://color-term.com),
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I suppose anyone who really wants to study the photos should be prepared to invest in the hardcover. The print quality in the catalog (on matte paper) is less than great.