Three Ways to Read One Character
This piece is designed to live in two worlds at once: from one angle, a tea tray; from another, simply a very large inkstone, returned to the exact use Duan stone has always been known for. The idea was to bring scholar's-desk material onto the tea table without pretending it's becoming something else.
Its name turns on a single character, 承, which Baoputang reads three ways. The first comes from Xu Shen's 说文解字: 承，奉也，受也 — to bear, to receive — describing simply what a tray does, holding whatever sits on top of it. The second comes from Sima Guang's 训俭示康: 世以清白相承 — to inherit, to carry forward — Duan stone returning, even on a tea table, to its original literati purpose, never quite forgetting where it came from. The third is 承欢, taking pleasure in something — available only to someone who already loves stone enough to choose one particular rough block and decide it's worth keeping for good.
Made from Kengzai stone, fine-grained and warm to the touch, the form is kept deliberately plain: clean lines, a squared, classical body, nothing extra.