Shateso’s Tea-Flip Brewer, although rather playful in its demeanor, has its roots in traditional Oriental tea brewing. The tea was brewed in a slender, long cup, and the brew was then transferred to a shorter, stouter cup by simply placing the overturned short cup above the tall cup, and flipping. The idea was to drink Oolong tea from the wide-mouthed cup, but have the lingering aroma emanate from the taller, slender vessel.

Tea-Flip uses a playful-yet-culturally-relevant flipping action to brew tea. In an effort to make loose-leaf tea brewing quite as easy as tea-bag brewing, the Tea-Flip vessel replaces the silken tea-bag, and acts as an infusion/brewing chamber. Armed with two mugs, the Tea-Flip lets you A. rinse your tea-leaves before brewing them (using the opaque, bamboo fiber mug), and sip your brew from a separate, transparent glass mug. All along, the tea-brewing chamber holds the leaves in it (after you empty the brew), giving you a nice wafting aroma of the tea, and making a significant olfactory upgrade to your brew.

Tea-bags are the fast-food equivalent of the art of tea-brewing. The leaves you find within the virtually opaque tea-bags are usually the refuse, the waste tea leaves that don’t find themselves passing the qualitative standards to be sold in loose-leaf boxes. Giving you the advantage of convenience, these tea-bags don’t taste anywhere close to what good tea should taste like, and the Tea-Flip wants to change that by extending that convenience to loose-leaf brewing.

Brewing tea in the Tea-Flip is almost as easy as dunking a tea-bag into water, and probably more fun too. The Tea-Flip comes with a brewing chamber (with a sieve-top) and two mugs. Put the leaves into the chamber and pour some cold water in and give it a slight stir. This opens up the leaves for proper brewing, as well as cleans out any impurities or dust. Place the opaque mug on top of the brewing container and flip it over, emptying the water out. Discard this water, and pour fresh hot water into the brewing chamber, this time allowing the hot water to get infused with the tea flavor. This time, use the second, transparent cup to transfer the brew, using the signature flip. Sip tea from the cup, while the brewing chamber instills the air with the aroma of your tea, elevating your tea experience, while keeping the process true to its heritage and culture!

Designers: Didier Quarroz, Luis Martinez, Camille Blin, Jean-Phillippe Bonzon & Anthony Guex

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T_Flip is a new kind of teaware that helps anybody to make and explore loose leaf tea in a simple and playful way. Inspired by the concept of the tea ceremony, T_Flip makes brewing a performance, literally “flip it” around to make a delicious tea.

T_Flip’s design creates a minimal neutral look to take away the stigma of “another culture”, being afraid of doing it wrong or “ it’s complicated to brew loose tea”. These are big factors that make people chose the “fast food” version of tea, tea bags.

Waking/Rinsing the tea is a central role in tea making, by cleaning the leaves of dust and small particles. This allows the leaves to unfold and open up the pores for the perfect flavor. Integrating this step in the design with the “Rinse” cup educates you on how to make the best use of your leaves. No other western tea ware design in the world has this unique feature.

The formal language and style originated from Camille Blin, head of Industrial design at ECAL and Anthony Guex. During further design process Jean-Philippe Bonzon, a former ECAL Student that works and lives in Shanghai adapted and refined certain design parts of the object. For the final stage of testing and prototyping, Mexican Industrial designer Luis Martinez was contributing knowledge and finalized the design for the working and fit for production object.

How It Works

Add tea leaves and Filter.

Add water and rinse the tea leaves.

Add Rinse Cup and flip it.

Put the Rinse Cup away

Add water and the Drinking Glass.

Flip your cup of tea.

And enjoy!

Click here to Buy Now: $35.00 $52.00 (32% off). Hurry, only 50 available and FREE shipping for our YD readers!