Handmade Purple Copper Four Spirits Catching Dew Tea Boat Tray – Vintage Fire-Color Gongfu Tea Tray with Drain, Chinese Kung Fu Tea Boat with Stand & Teapot Stand Holder (Crabapple Shape)
Handmade Purple Copper Four Spirits Catching Dew Tea Boat Tray – Vintage Fire-Color Gongfu Tea Tray with Drain, Chinese Kung Fu Tea Boat with Stand & Teapot Stand Holder (Crabapple Shape)
Handmade Purple Copper Four Spirits Catching Dew Tea Boat Tray – Vintage Fire-Color Gongfu Tea Tray with Drain, Chinese Kung Fu Tea Boat with Stand & Teapot Stand Holder (Crabapple Shape)
Handmade Purple Copper Four Spirits Catching Dew Tea Boat Tray – Vintage Fire-Color Gongfu Tea Tray with Drain, Chinese Kung Fu Tea Boat with Stand & Teapot Stand Holder (Crabapple Shape)
Handmade Purple Copper Four Spirits Catching Dew Tea Boat Tray – Vintage Fire-Color Gongfu Tea Tray with Drain, Chinese Kung Fu Tea Boat with Stand & Teapot Stand Holder (Crabapple Shape)
Handmade Purple Copper Four Spirits Catching Dew Tea Boat Tray – Vintage Fire-Color Gongfu Tea Tray with Drain, Chinese Kung Fu Tea Boat with Stand & Teapot Stand Holder (Crabapple Shape)

Purple Copper Four Spirits Catching Dew Tea Boat Tray | MoriMa Tea

$438.77

Encounter a heart-warming tea container, taking a sip or two of light and elegant tea in the middle of a busy schedule; between touch and vision, clearly comprehend heaven, earth and people of nature and ingenuity.

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Total price:$579.30
Description
  • Material: 99.9% pure copper (purple copper / red copper), uncoated.
  • Finish: Hand-applied flame patina (fire color) with a food-safe, permanent oxide layer.
  • Tea Boat Tray Shape: Crabapple form with low-relief Four Spirits (Dragon, Phoenix, Qilin, Tortoise).
  • Craft: Entirely handmade — hammered, shaped, hot-joined, hand-filed, and flame-finished.
  • External Dimensions: Length 14.5 cm (5.7 in) × Width 10.5 cm (4.1 in) × Height 5 cm (2.0 in)
  • Reservoir Capacity: 220 ml (7.4 fl oz), tested watertight.
  • Approx. Weight: 380–420 g (13.4–14.8 oz), subject to slight variation due to hand forging.
  • Base: Flat, burr-free, hand-polished undersurface.
  • Care: Rinse with warm water and mild soap; pat dry. Occasional lemon juice and salt rub to restore brightness if desired. Do not use abrasive pads or chemical cleaners.

  • A deep, well-mannered burgundy. Not the loud shimmer of a new penny, but the settled glow of copper that has been held, poured over, and cared for. The silhouette is crisp and deliberate, yet the edges feel warm in your palm — a quiet reminder that a human hand shaped this, slowly, with heat and patience.

    You don’t need another glossy, mass-produced tea tray that looks out of place by the second week. What you want is an object that makes your daily tea ritual feel grounded, a copper Tea Boat Tray that becomes more yours with every session. This is that piece.

  • Inspired by the clean restraint of Song Dynasty ceramics and the rich substance of Ming-Qing metalwork, the crabapple form carries an ancient wish for prosperity; the low-relief Four Spirits — dragon, phoenix, qilin, and tortoise — weave a quiet language of protection and harmony. The central reservoir is named Cheng Lu, “Catching Dew,” after the bronze immortals’ basin that gathered starlight and celestial essence. Practically, it simply catches every stray pour, keeping your tea cloth perfectly dry without any fussy drain tubes. But the poetry matters too, because the small rituals matter.
  • This is a piece you reach for, again and again. And over time, the raw fire-color finish will slowly shift, deepen, and mellow into a patina that is utterly unique to your hands. No two will ever be the same. That’s not a flaw; that’s the whole promise.

  • A Tea Boat Tray That Lives and Ages With You – Forged from 99.9% pure food-grade purple copper (red copper), the surface is flame-patinaed to a subdued soy-red hue without a single drop of paint or lacquer. As you use it, the copper will gradually build a warm, jade-like patina — a living finish that responds to the oils in your skin, the humidity of your tea room, and the passing of seasons. Prefer to keep it bright? A gentle rub with lemon juice restores the original tone. The choice is yours, and that flexibility is rare among vintage tea boat trays.

  • Self-Contained “Catch Dew” Reservoir — No Drip Tray Needed – The built-in 220 ml (7.4 oz) basin holds all the rinse water and overflow from multiple gongfu infusions. Because the entire body is shaped from a single copper blank and meticulously hot-joined, there are no welds or seals that could fail. It is pressure-tested to be completely watertight. This is a true Chinese tea tray with drain functionality, condensed into an elegant, handheld size.

  • Compact and Purposefully Proportioned for Gongfu Brewing – 14.5 cm (5.7″) long × 10.5 cm (4.1″) wide × 5 cm (2.0″) high. Designed to cradle a single Yixing teapot, a porcelain gaiwan, or a small kyusu comfortably — ideal for vessels up to about 200 ml. Its intimate footprint lets it live permanently on a narrow tea table, a home office desk, or a meditation corner without dominating the space. If you love the concentrated focus of a Kung Fu Tea Boat, this scale will feel exactly right.

  • Hand-Filed Edges and a Rock-Solid Flat Base – Every rim and corner is hand-filed and softened after shaping, so the crisp silhouette never bites your hand or scratches your furniture. The bottom is ground dead flat and gently smoothed; it won’t wobble or leave marks on polished wood. You can slide it across a Tea Boat Tray without a second thought.

  • More Than a Teapot Stand Holder – Because of its sculptural presence and food-safe, unsealed surface, this Tea Tray & Tea Boat Gongfu tea piece effortlessly doubles as an artful fruit bowl, a pastry plate for small gatherings, a catchall for keys and pocket change, or an altar tray for incense. It brings a quiet, slow-luxury sensibility to whatever role it takes on.

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Frequently Asked Questions

After the first use, my tray developed uneven dark patches and fingerprints. It looks dirty, not ‘patina.’ Is it defective?
This is the most frequently raised concern, and it’s completely understandable. Unsealed copper is a reactive, living surface. When warm tea water, tea oils, or the natural oils from your fingers touch the metal, they immediately begin to oxidize the surface — often in an uneven, blotchy pattern at first. This is not a defect; it is the earliest stage of patina formation, the very quality that connoisseurs prize. Think of it like a new leather bag: the first marks look messy, but over weeks and months they blend into a uniform, deep, warm character that no factory finish can replicate. Our tray arrives with a fire-stabilized oxide layer that slows this process just enough to let the patina develop gracefully. If you truly dislike the uneven phase, a quick wipe with a soft cloth, a little salt, and lemon juice will erase the current oxidation and restore the original tone within minutes. But most of our customers choose to let it evolve — because in six months, it will look like an heirloom.
The photos showed a rich, even red. Mine looks lighter in some spots, darker in others, almost like a burnt surface. Is it a bad paint job?
There is zero paint, dye, or electroplating on this tray. The color is created by hand-torching the copper — a technique where the artisan carefully moves a flame across the metal to grow a layer of copper oxide. Because the flame is manipulated by hand, the oxide film varies subtly in thickness, producing a natural interplay of burgundy, deep rose, and a faint charcoal whisper along the edges. This is not a uniform industrial coating; it is a gradient, and it is intentionally left slightly variable to remind you that a person — not a machine — made it. If you require a perfectly homogeneous, machine-printed color, this tray is likely not the right match. But if you want a piece that carries the evidence of flame and craft, the variation is the signature.
I’ve read that copper tea trays leak at the joints. If I pour water into this, will it slowly seep onto my table?
We are painfully aware of this frustration because we’ve seen it in countless mass-produced trays that rely on cold-soldering. Our tea boat is shaped from a single copper sheet and the basin area is carefully hot-joined under heat, which fuses the metal at a molecular level. Every single tray is filled with water and left on absorbent paper for at least 30 minutes before it leaves the workshop. It will not leak, weep, or sweat. If, in the exceedingly rare case, yours does, you are covered by a full replacement — but in our experience, the watertight integrity is one of the strongest points of this design.
It’s so small — I thought it would hold my large teapot. How do I know if my pot fits?
We understand how a photo can be misleading. Please use the dimensions as your ultimate guide: the tray is 14.5 cm × 10.5 cm (5.7″ × 4.1″). It is crafted specifically for the intimate scale of gongfu tea, where teapots rarely exceed 200 ml and have base diameters under roughly 10 cm. If you use a 600 ml Western-style teapot, this tray will not work. But if you brew with a small Yixing, a gaiwan, or a shiboridashi, you’ll find the proportions are exactly right — the small footprint keeps the focus on the tea, not the tray. We strongly encourage measuring your favorite teapot’s base against these dimensions before ordering.
The edges look sharp in the listing. Will it cut me or scratch my wood tea table?
That’s an understandable worry, especially with metalwork. After the shape is hammered in, our artisans spend a significant portion of the finishing time hand-filing every rim, corner, and the inner reservoir lip. The result is a chamfered, smooth edge that is entirely safe to run your finger along. The base is then ground flat and burnished, so it sits with full contact on your table and glides without gouging. We would never let a sharp edge leave the workshop — it would violate the very spirit of a tea tool that’s meant to be handled with calm.
Is pure copper safe to use around food? I’m worried about toxicity or a metallic smell.
Our tray is made from 99.9% pure red copper — the same grade used in premium cookware, copper kettles, and traditional jam pans. It contains no lead, cadmium, or nickel. The flame-patina surface is pure copper oxide, which is chemically stable and entirely non-toxic. A faint metallic scent when brand new is normal and completely disappears after the first wash with warm water and mild soap. Because we use absolutely no chemical sealants or lacquers, you can place dry foods — pastries, nuts, fruit, or cheese — directly onto the tray with confidence.
Won’t the red color just rub off onto my hands or tea towel over time?
No, it won’t. Unlike painted or electroplated items, the color on this tray is not a superficial layer sitting on top of the metal — it is the metal, transformed by heat. The oxide is chemically bonded to the copper at the surface, so it cannot peel, chip, or transfer. You can rub it firmly with a cloth every day for years, and the only thing that will change is the slow deepening of the patina itself.
I love the look but I’m afraid I’ll ruin it with improper care. How much maintenance does it really need?
Almost none, unless you choose to be hands-on. If you want the patina to develop naturally, simply pour off the water after each use, rinse the tray, and wipe it dry. That’s it. Over time it will become dark and glossy. If at any point you prefer the brighter, fresh-from-the-flame look, a 30-second rub with a paste of lemon juice and salt will take it right back. The power is entirely in your hands, and the tray is far more forgiving than most people expect.