Tea Tools, Secret-Colour Celadon and an Inventory

The 874 Famen assemblage preserves a sequence of equipment for storing tea, grinding it, sieving the leaves, boiling the drink and serving it. The Palace Museum journal article lists a tea chest, mill, mortar, sieve, measuring implements, brazier, fire tongs, stands, cups and vessels. The inventory inscription also names a set of seven pieces: tea trough, mill, sieve and spoon among them. Read as a sequence, the names turn a display of precious metal into a working set. Tea was stored, ground, sifted and prepared before it reached a cup; each vessel marks a different action. The assemblage belongs to the crypt’s offering context, while its parts also preserve a practical knowledge of preparation.

The gilt-silver mill has a trough and a roller. The roller’s parallel grooves helped crush compressed tea; its axle turned across the trough. Lotus and cloud patterns were cut into the silver and gilded, a technique that makes the ornament stand out against the metal. The trough has a cover, body and base, with a jewel-shaped grip and openwork panels. Its form joins a working surface to elaborate decoration. An engraved inscription gives the roller’s weight as thirteen taels; the marks “seventeenth” and “Fifth Brother” also appear on the roller and axle. They are brief traces of workshop organization or ownership, though the surviving marks do not identify a named artisan. The inventory calls the parts “tea trough” and “mill,” tying these physical details to the recorded set.

The National Museum of China describes a Famen bowl with an open mouth, folded rim, inward-curving body and flat base. A firing support trace remains beneath it. The plain surface lets the even, lustrous glaze carry the effect. On the outer wall cling fragments of the original packing paper, including the image of a Tang court lady. The museum identifies the vessel as one recorded in the crypt inventory as secret-colour porcelain. The wrapping tells another part of the story: paper placed between ceramics protected their surfaces from rubbing in storage. The paper has mostly decayed, while its image left a trace on the vessel. The bowl’s shape, glaze, firing mark and packing residue preserve successive stages—from making, to careful storage, to recovery in the crypt.

The inventory records seven secret-colour bowls, two with silver rims, and six dishes and trays. The excavated group of thirteen ceramics gives that wording a material counterpart. Their green glazes vary in tone; several vessel forms and the bowl’s wrapping can be inspected in museum records. The written name, the counted group and the objects together show how late Tang donors classified and presented ceramics as offerings. The bowl at the National Museum of China is one specifically identified example; the inscription’s count also directs attention to the remaining dishes and trays. Nearby, the tea mill and sieve preserve a different kind of record: the steps of preparing a drink. Together, these objects make the crypt inventory readable as both an offering list and a carefully assembled set of courtly goods.