Saint-Louis Apollo The Great Full-bodied Tea Set

The Saint-Louis Apollo The Great Full-Bodied Tea Set is part of the Apollo Tea collection, developed in collaboration with tea sommelier Lydia Gautier. The Great Full-Bodied Tea Set combines the Great Teapot with the Full-Bodied Tea Tumbler No. 2, creating a complete service for robust teas: aged pu-erh, strong breakfast blends, and full-bodied single-origin teas that develop complexity with a longer steep. The crystal form reveals the color and luminosity of tea in a way that ceramic obscures, and the Apollo’s Venetian rib motif gives the piece a refined surface that animates as the liquid moves within it.

The Apollo Tea collection pairs Saint-Louis’s mouth-blown and hand-cut crystal with bisque porcelain produced by a French manufacturer in Limoges founded in 1825. Saint-Louis selected unglazed bisque porcelain — the finest grade available — for its matte finish, ultra-fine texture, and exceptional delicacy. Each crystal tumbler in the tea range was developed in collaboration with tea sommelier Lydia Gautier, and the forms are designed so that crystal reveals the beauty of tea’s color in a way that ceramic obscures.

The Apollo Tea range was created in collaboration with tea sommelier Lydia Gautier and includes nine objects designed to match specific crystal forms with different categories of tea. Like wine, different teas benefit from different vessel shapes and sizes, and the Apollo range proposes a complete vocabulary for tea service in crystal: from the Light Tea Tumbler suited to delicate first-flush teas, to the Full-Bodied Tumbler for robust blends, to the Concentrated Tumbler and Charming Teapot for Asian-style concentrated infusions. The Apollo collection itself was born in 1979 as a contemporary interpretation of the Thistle pattern, and it has held its place at the center of the Saint-Louis table ever since. The Cristallerie has held the title of Royal Cristallerie since 1781.