Collection: Mugs, Cups & Drinkware

Choosing a vessel: size first, then shape, then material

A cup is not a neutral container. Three of its properties change the drink measurably before you have tasted anything — how much it holds, how the rim and walls are shaped, and what the wall is made of. Decide in that order and the choice gets easy. There are ten pieces on this page from six makers, running from a $7.95 single wooden cacao cup to a $126.99 set of four handmade stoneware cups, and this is the whole of the shop's drinkware: everything else in the ritual kitchen is something you put into these.

Size is the drink

The stated capacities here run from 4.5 oz to 16 oz — a three-and-a-half-fold spread, and that number alone tells you what each one is for. The small Ora cacao cup is made for a 4.5 oz serving, closer to an espresso than a hot chocolate: ceremonial cacao is concentrated and meant to be sipped, and a small cup enforces that where a large mug quietly encourages you to drink it like cocoa. The Kira glass cups — 1.75 inches high and 2.5 wide, no capacity printed, deliberately small — are the same discipline for tea, sake or a short pour after dinner. At the other end, the 16 oz can cup is built for an iced drink you will work through slowly, and the 16 oz crystal water bottle is the one that leaves the house. Between them sit the 10 and 12 oz pieces — the everyday range, the cup that ends up in your hand without a decision: the 10 oz Misewell coffee tumbler mug, the 12 oz Scotty dipped mug from the same studio, the 10 oz Epa stoneware cups and the 12 oz double-walled tasting glass.

Shape decides aroma and, for iced drinks, appearance

Most of what we call flavor is smell, and a straight-sided mug throws a good deal of it past your face on the way up. The tasting glass has a thin lip and a flare at the rim that collects aroma and delivers it — the reason tea, whisky and wine all converge on that silhouette. Fill it to just below the flare rather than to the rim; the empty inch is where the aroma gathers, and the maker's own advice is to smell before you sip and again halfway down. The magazine's case for glass teaware and tea as a sitting practice are both, in effect, arguments for that glass. The reverse case is the can shape: straight sides and a tall, narrow profile keep an iced matcha in layers instead of letting it collapse into one flat green — ice first, whisked matcha over it, cold milk last. One shape is for what you smell, the other for what you see. The Kira cups take a third route, a bud form with a wave at the rim so the lip meets your mouth rather than an edge.

Hot or cold is not interchangeable

Worth checking before you buy, because it is the mistake that ruins a piece. The 16 oz can glass is built for cold drinks only — it is not heat resistant, and pouring hot water into it is how a glass like that breaks. The Morning Made insulated tumbler (currently out of stock) is likewise a cold-drink cup by the maker's own description, built for iced matcha and cold brew on the commute. The double-walled tasting glass is the opposite: two walls with air between them insulate, so hot stays hot, cold stays cold, and the outside stays comfortable to hold either way. Stoneware handles both, with a wall thick enough to keep coffee hot and a rim cool enough to drink from straight away — both Misewell mugs are described as equally happy with hot and cold, and the Epa cups the same, with one caveat from the maker: avoid thermal shock, so do not take them from cold water straight to boiling. The Kira glass likes a warm-up with hot water before anything hot goes in. The crystal bottle should never be filled with boiling water. If you want one vessel for the whole day, hot-and-cold is the property to buy on, and the tasting glass or either stoneware mug is the answer.

Material, and what handmade actually means here

Stoneware is fired dense and hot, which is why it is an everyday object rather than a careful one — dishwasher-safe, chip-resistant, and it holds heat. Both Misewell mugs are thrown by hand in the maker's own studio in Milwaukee and go straight in the dishwasher; the Epa cups are made by Gharyan Stoneware with local artisans from a toxin-free clay body, dishwasher-safe too, though hand washing keeps the matte surface even. Glass shows the drink and adds nothing to the taste; the same reasoning applies to the glass straw set (three straws and a cleaning brush), which, unlike metal, does not put a flavor of its own into something as delicate and slightly savory as matcha. Wood is warm to hold and light — the Ora cups were drop-tested from six feet and are meant to travel — and it is the one material here to keep away from a dishwasher. The tasting glass and the Kira cups are hand wash only as well: double-walled glass can trap water between the layers in a dishwasher, and the Kira rim is the thinnest part of the piece.

Handmade means the pieces will not match. The Milwaukee mugs and the Epa set carry small differences in glaze, weight and line from one piece to the next, and the tasting glass is hand-blown, so its size and shape vary a little too. That is the nature of the object, not a defect — worth knowing if you are buying a set of four and expect them identical. The Epa cups and the Kira glasses are sold only as sets of four; the Ora cups come singly or in sets of two, four or six in either the small or the large size, which is the sensible way to buy if the point is serving other people rather than a cup of your own.

Which piece for which drink

For ceremonial cacao, the small Ora cup is the purpose-built answer and the cheapest thing on the page; prepare the cacao in a jug and pour into the wood rather than whisking in it, and keep one cup for cacao and nothing else, as the maker suggests. What ceremonial cacao is and how to hold a ceremony at home cover the drink itself. For matcha and latte blends, the can cup and the glass straws are the iced pairing; hot, any of the stoneware works, and warming the cup for ten seconds first matters more for matcha than for anything else because it tastes flat landing in cold stoneware — matcha grades explained is the guide to what goes in. For loose-leaf tea, the tasting glass is the drinking vessel and the shop's two-cup glass teapot is the brewing one; the steel infuser that appears in some of the tasting glass photographs is not included and we do not stock it separately. Green tea water temperature and how to read a tea label are the two tea articles worth reading first; and if you read the leaves afterward, the guides to tea leaves and coffee grounds both want a plain, pale-bottomed cup, which is a point for the white Epa or the white Misewell. For coffee, the two Milwaukee mugs are the everyday cups and the Epa set is the one for guests. For water, the crystal bottle: 16 oz, steel and glass with an insulating sleeve, a sealed crystal chamber in the base, and a choice of five stones of which Clear Quartz, Obsidian and Tiger Eye are in stock and Amethyst and Rose Quartz are currently sold out.

The crystal water bottle deserves one honest note: the stones sit sealed in a chamber in the base and never touch the water. That is the safe design — the magazine's guides to gem water and which crystals cannot go in water explain why direct contact is a bad idea for several popular stones. Crystals are traditionally used for focus and intention, and that use is not scientifically established — the bottle does not change what you are drinking, and nothing here is a health claim; what Emoto's water photographs actually show is the fair-minded read on the wider idea. The rest of the crystal shelf is under crystals and stones.

Most of this page also lives on the room-and-moment shelves: the two Misewell mugs, the Epa set and the tumbler on morning ritual; the crystal bottle and the tumbler on desk and workspace and, with the Ora cups, on travel and pocket; the Kira set and the Epa set on altar and home; the Epa set under $100 to $500. The Scotty mug, the Epa set and the tasting glass are also filed under one of a kind, which on this page means hand-thrown or hand-blown rather than a single existing piece. If the drink is part of a morning practice rather than just breakfast, what the research on gratitude practice supports and kitchen witchery are the two magazine pieces that meet the kitchen end of a ritual.

Questions we get asked