SIP Magazine Feature: 'Earthen Essence: Sipping Chai from the Kulhar'
- Cerys Jones
- 6 days ago
- 10 min read
This spring I had the beautiful opportunity to collaborate with my Goldsmiths Journalism classmates, to create a magazine brand from scratch. We pooled our diverse ideas, inspirations and aspirations, and came up with SIP.
SIP is a print and online magazine which explores global culture over the rim of a cup. How are drinking rituals experienced around the world. How do we commune and connect over shared beverages and their respective vessels? SIP explores these stories through an international, multimedia and creative lens.
My role in the magazine was sub editor and designer, and for me it was the perfect combination of human interest, travel writing and visual design practise to conclude a vibrant three years at university .
Below is the first of four features I contributed to the project.
Visit the SIP website to read all our articles.
'Earthen Essence: Sipping Chai from the Kulhar'
Mar 31, 2025
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by Cerys Jones
Each humble cup is infused with history, culture, and an unmistakable earthy aroma. Cerys Jones uncovers a five thousand year old secret to Kolkata’s superior chai: it’s all in the clay.
With each sweet, milky sip from the unglazed clay vessel, the bustling street comes to a standstill, the never-ending honks and horns, heckles of sellers and flows of conversation evaporate, if only for a moment. I first experienced this moment of bliss in the summer of 2022, during my first trip to the city of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), and to India.
The humble kulhar (or bhar in Bengali), is the clay cup used to serve chai, as well as lassi, malai milk, dahi (curd) and other drinks across the subcontinent.
The rim of the bhar is warm, rough, slightly dusty. The first gulp burns, as freshly brewed masala chai bursts the top layer of malai (milk skin) which has solidified on its surface. It tastes herbal, milky and earthy.
Local blogger and digital creator Bishal Pal explains it is often referred to as “maathi cha” (soil/earth tea) in Bengali, due to the bhar’s earthy flavour. Bishal was born and raised in Kolkata, and says: “It (drinking chai) is not just an important part of living in Kolkata, it is our emotion. Wherever it is, it is like we are sharing emotions, sharing a moment with each other, we can go deeper in conversation.”
Akhil Patel, founder of UK based brand Amala Chai, adds: “Kolkata is the number one city for tea. For them, tea is like an emotion.”
Kolkata, sometimes referred to as India’s cultural capital, is well known for being a time capsule of a city, still proudly preserving its heritage and traditions, while the rest of India accelerates into the future. Hardy rickshaw-wallahs still pull two-wheeled passenger carts by hand, grand colonial architecture dominates the smoggy skyline, and many chai-wallahs (tea sellers) serve the milky concoction in these unglazed, single-use clay cups. Aditya Shyam Bazari, who manages his family’s tea manufacturing business in the northern states of Upper Assam, North Bank and Arunachal Pradesh, says: “The kulhar culture is big in Calcutta. That used to be the traditional way of drinking tea, but it got replaced with paper and plastic cups in the last 20 to 25 years.”
Why does Kolkata insist on preserving this tradition? According to Aditya, it is mostly due to what is known as “Babu culture”. This term originates in 18th and 19th century Bengali nobility, but has acquired a more prerogative meaning, referring to Bengal’s laid-back (inefficient to some) work culture. “Calcutta is said to have a Babu culture, which makes things slow and old. Lunch break in Calcutta lasts one and a half, two hours. They have lunch, then sleep for a while, then wake up comfortably and go to work. Pretty chilled, pretty relaxed. They enjoy life as they live it, which makes Calcutta very different from the rest of India,” Aditya says. To him, the use of the bhar to serve chai is indicative of this meditative, traditional art-de-vivre.
Kulhar-style vessels predate Babu culture, however. They have been used on the subcontinent for over five thousand years. “It was in the Indus Valley where they were first excavated. From what I understand, it gave the beverage a vessel and a really earthy tone to the drink,” Akhil explains. These humble clay cups have played a vital role in keeping ancient and modern Indians hydrated, and perhaps more importantly, caffeinated.
Kulhars are made throughout India by collecting natural, locally sourced clay, often from the ghats (riverbanks) of rivers such as the Hooghly (a tributary of the Ganges) in Kolkata. The clay is then shaped by specialist artisans using a potter’s wheel, before being left out to dry and then fired in a kiln. Whole communities are involved in the making process of bhars. Such is the case with the artisans photographed in Bagnan, Howrah District, on the outskirts of Kolkata. The cups are then transported to street vendors and tea establishments across the region.
Kulhars are unglazed and are therefore almost never re-used. In fact, it is customary to smash a used kulhar in the street, either by throwing it or stamping on it. Bishal explains, “We smash the bhar to make sure that no one can reuse it, for the purpose of hygiene.” Kulhars may be the prototype single-use cups, but they are far less harmful to the environment than plastic or paper cups. As they are made from 100% natural clay, the smashed cups return to the earth, supposedly not upsetting the equilibrium of the local environment.
Why is chai served in kulhars superior?
The natural environment isn’t the only one to sing the kulhar’s praises. Ask any avid tea drinker in Kolkata (and often in the rest of the country), and most will tell you that chai always tastes better when served in kulhars, instead of plastic or paper cups.
“It honestly adds such an amazing taste to the chai. It just feels so earthy and natural, compared to drinking out of a cardboard cup,” Akhil says.
Ganesh Prajapat, founder of Mittikart, a manufacturer and supplier of kulhars based in Jaipur, Rajasthan, agrees that drinking from a kulhar enhances taste and aroma. He also notes the health benefits: kulhars do not release microplastics when heated like their plastic counterparts do. Mittikart was launched in 2021, with a vision to “revive the age-old tradition of clay and terracotta craftsmanship”. Mittikart produce a range of earthenware products, including their bestselling clay kulhar, in a bid to modernise these traditional items and promote their usage as alternatives to single-use plastics.
However, Aditya says there may be more to a good cup of chai than, well, the cup. “People do say that tea tastes better in kulhars, but the person who makes the tea and the way the tea is being prepared also makes a lot of difference. The ones who serve in kulhars are professionals, they prepare tea maybe 150 to 200 times a day. Their hands are accustomed to preparing tea regularly. So, I’m not sure if it’s the kulhar which makes it taste better, or if it’s the person preparing it.”
The quality of the actual tea leaf is also very important. Bishal says, “There are a lot of expensive Darjeeling teas out there, the kind you serve for the prime minister or big celebrities.” Aditya confirms that “Darjeeling is the most expensive”, followed by Ceylon, Assam, Dooars and various South Indian teas. Akhil, who sources Assam tea for Amala Chai, says that the chai-wallahs in Kolkata are especially concerned for the quality of the tea they serve. “I hadn’t been to somewhere where people really fussed over the quality of the tea, which was interesting compared to other cities.”
How sustainable are kulhars?
Akhil notes: “It does solve a lot of the single use wastage that we have with our cups. To keep reusing and producing those clay cups, it would really solve a lot of the recycling hassle that we have at the moment.”
Anabelle de Gersigny is the co-founder of Hundred House Coffee and one its initiatives, The Kulhar Project, which debuted at London Coffee Festival in September 2021.
“With the kulhar cup, there’s a seamlessness between nature and consumption. In my head, when I close my eyes, the kulhar cup starts as earth and then it comes up and it’s made into a cup and you drink, and then if it were an animation, it would melt back into the earth again.”
However, the kulhar has also been criticised by some for not being as economically and environmentally sustainable as it first appears. Many chai-wallahs who work on shoestring budgets cannot afford to serve from kulhars, which are more expensive to source than plastic or paper cups. Some also complain that the porous nature of clay cups means that too much of the chai is absorbed, affecting their sales. For example, for 150 ml of chai, 50 ml may be absorbed into the unglazed clay container, meaning the seller must charge less for the same amount of chai than they would if serving in a plastic cup.
There is also speculation that kulhars take longer than we realise to decompose and re-enter the ground. There is currently no data to back up the claim that kulhars simply return to the ground as soon as they are disposed of, especially because baked clay takes far longer to decompose than raw, unfired clay. Indeed, some experts have argued that the time it takes for kulhars to biodegrade is longer than the stated eight to 10 years, considering that Indus Valley kulhar-style vessels were preserved for 5000 years.
Reimagining the kulhar
Considering some of the economic and environmental issues, how are some initiatives in India and around the world, reimagining the kulhar in an even more sustainable way?
Hundred House Coffee’s Kulhar Project was launched in 2021, aiming to give members of the public the opportunity to turn their own kulhars.
In collaboration with Herefordshire-based CUP Ceramics, this initiative created a space for people to engage with sustainable practices on a personal level. Annabelle explains why sustainability is at the heart of the initiative. “It’s like people move towards reinventing something in some strange way. We’re reinventing the wheel with ceramic cups, but forgetting the heritage of it. I’ve always been interested in the crossovers of sustainability and creativity, how needs trigger creative output. Sustainability doesn’t need to be a barrier to living. It can actually be a route to creative output. It was one of those things, taking that moment to just stop and make something with your hands that’s ultimately extremely tactile.”
“We were taking it to different venues. We would just move, set up the potter’s wheel, set up the shelves and through the event people would make cups and it was pretty much slammed for every event. There was a cup being made every sort of 10 or 15 minutes.”
In allowing people to connect with their earthenware and drinking vessel in an immediate, tactile way, Anabelle hoped the project would promote the use of non-machine manufactured reusable cups, inspired by the age-old subcontinent tradition. But instead of smashing them when done, consumers can wash and reuse the kulhar, reducing waste. She describes the need for such portable, reusable ceramic cups: “The tea drinker, the nomad moving around the city or moving around the country who brings their own reusable cup. I find a lot of the glass cups and plastic cups don’t last as long as they should. There are other solutions and let’s not see it as a challenge that needs to be overcome, but as a creative challenge.”
In 2022, Amala Chai collaborated with London-based ceramicist Laura Hughes to launch two new reusable kulhar designs: the ‘classic’ and ‘modern’ kulhars, hand thrown by Laura herself, are sold alongside Amala Chai’s ethically sourced tea and spice mixes. Akhil explains: “As people who really care about the home ritual of chai, having a clay cup to go alongside it is perfect.” He jokes that, like The Kulhar Project’s creations, these handcrafted and glazed kulhars are not the single-use type to be smashed in the street.
“I definitely wanted to create a clay cup for people to use at home. But I think it would have been a bit too simplistic to just buy one which is exactly the same (as the classic kulhar). I think our brand is something which fuses very authentic parts of the chai drinking culture, but with a new feel. We reached out to a couple of London based ceramicists. It’s totally different if that person has been to India and has experienced part of the clay cup culture, they have a feel of what it needs to be like. Laura spent time there and we gave her some rough visuals and she came up with a few different variations of the clay cup. It was a fun project to go through. I liked her style because it was very earthy and natural.”
Akhil also shares an initiative he encountered in the southern Indian region of the Nilgiris, where chai-wallahs are being encouraged to replace plastic cups, not with single use kulhars but reusable chai glasses (which are more popular in this region). “They have taught the chai-wallahs how to clean all the glasses with boiling water, so they actually don’t use any plastic or cardboard packaging for the chai. It is actually a plastic free zone. It shows what can be possible.”
Raphaëlle Jones, a London-based woodworker and founder of Uprooted Studio, recently created a Kulhar Replica, not from clay at all, but from salvaged wood. She sells them on her online store, and explains the inspiration behind this product. “I love the story around them. But what bugged me was that once the tea is consumed, the vessel, as custom dictates, is smashed on the ground. I guess my replica version is more sustainable. The tradition should endure but maybe not as a single use cup. The whole tradition of it is beautiful and unique but there might be a way to make them reusable.”
She says that these replicas are meant to offer a reusable alternative to single use cups, whilst honouring the kulhar tradition. Similarly to traditional kulhars, her replicas are made from local, natural materials, adding to their sustainable appeal. “The authentic kulhars are made from dug up silt and baked on a pit fire. It bears similarity with my own process of locally sourcing and foraging my raw materials.”
The secret to a perfect cup of chai?
Clearly, lots of craftsmanship, skill and time (at least five thousand years of it) have gone into perfecting the humble kulhar. Whether one chooses the traditional, smashable kulhar or a modern reusable version, or yes, maybe even a plastic or paper cup, drinking chai remains an integral part of South Asian, and increasingly global cultures and communities. Any tips to concoct the perfect cuppa?
Aditya shares his preferred method. “I start by boiling the water. I add adrak (ginger) and follow it up with eleichi (cardamom). I let it boil properly for a while, so that the flavours are absorbed. Once it starts boiling, I add some milk. I go for a creamier version of tea so I add some extra milk. After, I add sugar, because I want it to get absorbed into the tea. Then I add the tea. That is when I top it up with saffron. That is the perfect cup of chai for me.”
Akhil offers a similar method, with some key elements not to miss. “I always do a 50/50 ratio of water and milk. So, it’s water, spice mix, freshly grated fiery ginger and jaggery.” Jaggery, rather than sugar, is the unrefined, traditional sweetener used in chai. Akhil also advises to add the tea just when the milk is boiling. “It stops it from being bitter and you really taste the fresh flavour of the tea.”
Drink up.
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