---
title: 'Korean teaware: dagwan, sukwu, celadon and buncheong'
url: 'https://howtotea.me/teaware/by-region/japan-and-korea/korean-teaware'
markdown: 'https://howtotea.me/teaware/by-region/japan-and-korea/korean-teaware.md'
lang: en
date: '2026-10-25'
description: 'Korean teaware: the dagwan teapot and sukwu cooling bowl, four handle types, Goryeo celadon, buncheong, Joseon white porcelain and Korean bowls in Japan.'
---

# Korean teaware: dagwan, sukwu, celadon and buncheong 茶具

 Editors · October 25, 2026 · 9 min read

A Korean tea set is built around the dagwan teapot and the sukwu, a bowl where water cools for [green tea](https://howtotea.me/teas/green). Its ceramics come in three kinds: Goryeo celadon, buncheong and Joseon white porcelain.

 ![A Korean tea set: side-handled teapot, water-cooling bowl and two cups](https://howtotea.me/images/c/o/v/e/r/cover-a4a49ce7.webp) Photo: [국립국어원](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dagi_(tea_set).jpg), [CC BY-SA 2.0 kr](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/kr/deed.en), cropped 

茶具

Korean teaware

dagu

 Name: 다구, 茶具: tea utensils

Teapot: dagwan (다관), 150–300 ml in seller listings

Water bowl: sukwu (숙우): cools boiling water to the right temperature

Goryeo celadon: 10th–14th centuries, centers at Gangjin and Buan

Buncheong: about 1400–1600

White porcelain: from the 15th century, Bunwon court kilns

A Korean tea table looks different from a Chinese or Japanese one. Tea brews in a small teapot, water cools in a bowl beside it, and the cups and stands have almost no color, because green liquor shows best against white. Behind that plainness stand more than a thousand years of Korean ceramics.

## What stands on the table

The basics are the dagwan (다관), the sukwu, cups on stands, a tray and a bowl for waste water. For powdered tea you add a sabal bowl and a whisk, though they see less use at home. Keep two or three cloths: one for cups, one for everything else. Water boils in a kettle; a stone one made of talc-chlorite heats slowly but holds heat for a long time. A shop-bought set usually includes a dagwan, a sukwu, five cups and five stands.

Each piece has its own materials. Dagwans are made of celadon or white porcelain, sometimes silver or brass. Stands come in ceramic, pewter, wood and bamboo; if the clink of porcelain on porcelain annoys you, choose wood. A [tea caddy](https://howtotea.me/teaware/utensils/tea-caddies) has to close tightly, and porcelain lids often do not.

### Sukwu: the water-cooling bowl

The sukwu (숙우) takes boiling water from the kettle and lets it cool. Nothing brews in it, and that is what sets the Korean method apart from the [gaiwan](https://howtotea.me/teaware/brewing-vessels/gaiwan): the water reaches its temperature away from the leaf. It is usually a white porcelain sabal bowl. In modern sets it doubles as a pitcher, and the whole infusion goes into it so that every cup comes out equally strong. A [fair cup](https://howtotea.me/teaware/brewing-vessels/chahai) does the same evening-out, but the Korean bowl works twice, before the brew and after it.

The full sequence is covered under [darye](https://howtotea.me/traditions/japan-and-korea/darye). For the ware, one point matters: the sukwu is there by default for green tea, which boiling water spoils.

### Four types of dagwan

Dagwans are classed by where the handle sits:

- **sangpahyeong** (상파형), a top handle like a kettle's. A movable handle is more comfortable than a fixed one;
- **hupahyeong** (후파형), a back handle opposite the spout;
- **hoengpahyeong** (횡파형), a side handle;
- **bobyeonghyeong** (보병형), no handle: you hold the pot by the body.

When buying, check the lid, the spout and the strainer. The lid should sit snugly, the stream should cut off cleanly, and the strainer should be fine. After tea, take the spent leaf out at once. Sellers list 150–300 ml, but no museum or academic standard for dagwan and sukwu sizes could be found, so treat these as seller figures.

## Goryeo celadon

Tea reached Korea from Tang China no later than the 7th century, and, according to the chronicle, seeds arrived in 828. The Goryeo court (918–1392) had a special office that served tea at ceremonies. People drank whisked powdered tea, as in Song China, and tea boiled from pressed cakes.

The ceramic of the age was celadon. Its gray-green comes from iron in the body and the glaze, fired in a reducing atmosphere at about 1150 °C or lower. Potters first learned the technique from southern Song kilns, and by the middle of the 12th century the centers had settled at Buan and Gangjin (Jeolla province). Around 200 kilns remain at Gangjin, and the site has been listed as historic monument no. 68 since January 21, 1963. Registers disagree on its area: 671,726 m² in the English register and 1,029,640 m² on the Korean portal. Sadang-ri has more than 43 kilns of the 12th and 13th centuries, and it was there that color and inlay reached their peak.

In 1123 the Song envoy Xu Jing spent about a month in Kaesong and described the local ware.[1](#fn:1) The people of Goryeo called the green glaze **pisaek**, and in recent years, he wrote, the work had grown finer and the color better. He named a lion-shaped incense burner as the finest piece and compared the rest with Yuezhou and the new wares of Ruzhou. On tea he noted that the local kind was bitter and astringent, and that imported Chinese cakes were prized. Cups and braziers followed Chinese models.

Goryeo's signature technique was **sanggam**: white and dark clay pressed into a carved design in the soft body, then glazed. Potters also used carving, stamping, iron and copper painting, and openwork. Song powdered tea called for black bowls, mostly imported from Jian and Jizhou, while potters at Gangjin and Buan tried to copy the shape in iron glaze and in celadon. For the Chinese prototypes, see [Yue and Longquan](https://howtotea.me/teaware/materials/chinese-ceramics/qingci), [Jian zhan](https://howtotea.me/teaware/materials/chinese-ceramics/jian-zhan) and the [Song kilns](https://howtotea.me/teaware/materials/chinese-ceramics/song-yao).

## Buncheong and Joseon white porcelain

Late inlaid celadon turned into **buncheong** (분청사기): a coarse gray body under white slip and a greenish, translucent glaze. The art historian Ko Yusop coined the term in the 1930s. In the 15th century much buncheong was made for central and local government offices, and each piece was stamped with the office's name, most often Jangheung-go or Naesam-si. So calling it “peasant ware” is wrong, at least for the 15th century.

Buncheong decoration falls into seven techniques: sanggam inlay, inhwa stamping, pakji sgraffito, chohwa carving, cheorhwa iron painting, gwiyal brushed slip and dumbeong dipping in slip. Regional schools had their own strengths. Gyeongsang is known for stamping, Jeolla for carving and sgraffito, Mount Gyeryongsan in Chungcheong for iron painting. By the 16th century decoration had shrunk to a brush stroke and a dip, both meant to imitate white porcelain. The Japanese invasions of 1592–1598 cut the tradition off, and when kilns restarted in the 17th century only porcelain came back.

Joseon white porcelain was a court product. Around 1466 the court founded the Bunwon group of kilns in present-day Gwangju near Seoul, and they ran until they were privatized in the 1880s. From the 16th century provincial kilns made white ware too, one of the reasons buncheong declined. Cobalt painting was prized from the 15th century, iron from the 17th, copper red mostly in the 18th.

## Korean bowls in Japan

From the 16th century, plain bowls from Joseon provincial kilns became “Korean bowls” (高麗茶碗, kōrai chawan) in Japan. The term first appears in documents in 1537, and in 1558–1572 such bowls made up more than a third of those used at Japanese tea gatherings. The ido bowl ranks highest. Its marks are a tall foot like a “bamboo joint,” a loquat-colored glaze and glaze pooled at the foot. “Goryeo” in the name simply means “brought from Korea,” and almost all such bowls are Joseon.

Much of what Japanese collections hold was made to order: gohon, goshomaru and irabo bowls came from Busan or Japan, made to Japanese patterns. For the Japanese side, see [chawan](https://howtotea.me/teaware/by-region/japan-and-korea/chawan) and [chanoyu utensils](https://howtotea.me/teaware/by-region/japan-and-korea/chanoyu-dogu).

## Working with the set

Korean handbooks give this order. Boil water in the kettle. Pour it into the sukwu, from there into the dagwan, from the dagwan into the cups, then into the waste bowl. This warms all the ware (more in [preheating and rinsing](https://howtotea.me/brewing/basics/preheating-and-rinsing)). Fill the sukwu again and wait for the water to cool. Put the leaf, about 2 g per person, into the dagwan and pour the cooled water over it. Pour into the cups a little at a time, going from cup to cup and back so the strength evens out. Brew two or three more times.

The numbers depend on the tea. The Boseong county table for [green tea](https://howtotea.me/teas/green) runs like this: top grade ujeon, 5 g for three people, water at about 50 °C, 60 ml, 150 seconds; gokku at 60 °C for 120 seconds; mid-grade green, 8 g for five, at 80 °C, 60 seconds; coarse-leaf yeopcha with boiling water for 30 seconds. For ujeon, sellers and bloggers usually suggest hotter water, 55–65 °C. Oxidized teas, balhyocha, take 85–95 °C, so they need no cooling bowl.

## Choosing, antiques, care

For cups and the sukwu, pick a white interior; the color of the liquor shows better on it. New celadon, porcelain and buncheong come from several centers today. In Mungyeong, tea bowls are fired in mangdaengi, wood-burning multi-chamber kilns. The potter Kim Jong-ok has been a bearer of national intangible heritage no. 105 since 1996; depending on the source, his family has made pots for seven to nine generations and 200 to 270 years. The Mungyeong tea bowl festival has run since 1999. Icheon, a UNESCO city of crafts, has over 300 workshops and about 40 wood-fired kilns.

Take care with antiques. Goryeo tombs have been looted for celadon since the late 19th century, and a market in fakes and souvenir replicas grew up at the same time, including factory wares of the colonial period. “Goryeo” celadon with no provenance needs an expert's eye before you buy.

Wash glazed celadon and porcelain in hot water without detergent or abrasives, never in a dishwasher, and dry them upside down. Sellers advise keeping porous buncheong for one type of tea. These are shop tips, not norms. For ceramics in general, see [firing](https://howtotea.me/science/material-and-firing/kilns-and-firing) and [teaware safety](https://howtotea.me/teaware/care-and-collecting/teaware-safety).

## Common questions

How is a dagwan different from a Chinese teapot or a gaiwan?

In size and in how it is used. Seller listings give 150–300 ml, more than a [gongfu cha](https://howtotea.me/brewing/methods/gongfu-cha) teapot, and the dagwan is used together with the sukwu: the water cools separately, then goes onto the leaf. With a [gaiwan](https://howtotea.me/teaware/brewing-vessels/gaiwan) that step is rare, and the gaiwan suits any type of tea.

What is the sukwu for?

To bring boiling water down to 50–80 °C while the leaf still sits dry. Korean green tea turns bitter in hot water, so you let the water cool in the sukwu before pouring it into the dagwan. Oxidized teas, brewed at 85–95 °C, can do without it.

Is Goryeo celadon the same as Chinese celadon?

No, although Goryeo potters took the glaze and the kilns from southern China under the Song. They developed their own methods, above all sanggam inlay, and in 1123 the envoy Xu Jing already noted that the color of their ware had improved. For the Chinese line, see [Yue and Longquan celadon](https://howtotea.me/teaware/materials/chinese-ceramics/qingci).

Notes

1. Xu Jing, *Xuanhe fengshi Gaoli tujing*, juan 32 “Vessels, part 3,” 1124: [text on shidianguji.com](https://www.shidianguji.com/book/NA03246/chapter/1m7bgwhftocvz). [↩](#fnref1:1)

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