dogma_i > wrote:
>I like the idea of glass teaware. Having spent a number of years in
>academic and industrial research labs, though, my standards of quality
>and utility for glassware are somewhat distorted relative to the
>pots'n'pans market. I do quite like cut (as distinct from molded)
>crystal from Ireland and Bohemia; there, the many irregularities give
>voice to the hand-worker's efforts. But I have yet to see a piece of
>glass tea-brewing equipment that I thought well-designed and -executed,
>especially as regards glass weight over various parts of the object.

Ask your local laboratory glassware guy to make you one. Should not be
too hard to take a couple pyrex beakers and some glass rod and make a
gaiwan from them.

Where I work, we shut our glass shop down about five years ago, since
it was getting cheaper to farm custom glasswork out. Among the miscellaneous
stuff lying around when they shut down were dozens of beautiful pyrex coffee
mugs and a 30-inch model of the Space Shuttle made out of borosilicate rod.
Oh, and a one-gallon French press made from part of a damaged Dewar.

You should note that a lot of people value the very thin glasswork,
as used in the Jaener infusers, for instance. It is very delicate,
and they consider this to be a good thing. Clearly your goals, like
mine, are different.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."