Chen Mansheng

Chen Mansheng was the ultimate Renaissance man of the tea world — a poet, calligrapher, magistrate, and design visionary who proved that the best ideas happen when artists and craftsmen collaborate. Teaming up with master potter Yang Pengnian in the early 1800s, he sketched out 18 elegantly simple teapot forms and inscribed them with his own witty, soulful poetry, forever marrying literature with clay. His designs were so perfectly balanced between function and beauty that they're still being made — and treasured — two centuries later.