(a page for reference, because these questions come up over and over)
This is a subject that returns over
and over on the tea forums I frequent. As with everything
else tea-related, I am not an expert on teawares, but I have
played a little with several different kinds of vessels for
brewing tea, and in my hands, some work better than others for
different kinds of teas or different occasions.
When picking a teapot, gaiwan, or other brewing vessel, you want to keep several things in mind: brewing style, the teas to be brewed, and whether this will be one vessel to brew all teas or one dedicated to just a particular type of tea. Brewing vessels come in different materials--some slick and nonabsorbent, or rough and porous; in different sizes--large for serving several people, small for personal brewing of a multiply-infused tea; and with different styles of filter or strainer--built in, added on, quick flowing or slow, and more or less easily clogged. Your preferences in brewing may require a fairly specialized pot or you can find one thing that does almost anything.
Styles of brewing (& relationship to teapot size):
'Western' brewing means making a single infusion from the tea leaves, e.g., putting a small amount of leaf in a pot, letting it steep in hot water for several minutes, pouring it out into a cup, and throwing out the wet leaves after that one batch is drunk. If you brew like this, a pot of 8 to 20 ounces or 250 to 500 mL is probably just right for 1-3 cups of tea per pot.
'Gongfu' brewing (aka 'gongfu cha') means taking a larger amount of leaf for the same size pot, pouring water over it, waiting a shorter time, pouring out and drinking that tea, and then adding more water to the same leaves, and making another infusion. This can go on, depending on your preferences and the type of tea, for four to twenty infusions, or even more for a few really exceptional teas. Brewing a little at a time lets you sip it while freshly brewed, and you can enjoy the evolution of flavor that often occurs with a really nice tea, where some flavors diffuse out into the liquid quicker than others.
Depending on the type of tea, you may want a small or very small teapot: I like my tea a little more dilute than most, and often get more steeps than other folks here because of that. I usually anticipate 3-4 steeps for white teas, 4-6 for green teas, 6-10 for oolongs, 10-20 for really fine Dan Cong oolongs, 1-3 for yunnan black teas, and 10-30 for puerhs.
Since I like to prepare a pint to a quart of tea per session for one person, I generally use a 4-6 ounce vessel for white or green teas, a 2-4 ounce vessel for oolongs or puerhs, and occasionally a 1 to 1 1/2 ounce vessel for Dan Cong oolongs or expensive aged sheng puerhs.
'Grandpa' style brewing is the simplest of all: putting the leaves directly in the cup you'll be drinking from, adding hot water, and sipping the tea from it, and is most often used for teas with particularly attractive leaves, like Tai Ping Hou Kui and Long Jing (Dragonwell).
I mostly do gongfu brewing, as many teas don't taste as good when they sit for a while before drinking--especially delicate whites and greens, but also Dan Congs and many sheng puerhs. So
Materials
Glass & glazed ceramic
Glass doesn't absorb the flavors of tea, so if well rinsed out after use, it won't carry over flavors from one tea to another. As glazed pottery is essentially clay coated with colorful glass, the same thing holds if a ceramic pot has a glazed interior. This makes these a good choice for a wide variety of teas, especially if you're only going to have one teapot for all teas. Since most glass teapots are fairly thin walled, they may not hold the heat as well as a thicker ceramic vessel, an important consideration if you're brewing long infusions with hot-brewed teas (oolongs, puerhs), where a thin glass or porcelain might cool off too much before the end of the infusion. It doesn't mute any flavors, which can be an advantage if you're brewing a tea with very special aromas.
Unglazed ceramic
A vessel that is unglazed on the inside can absorb and mute some flavors in a tea, which can be good (in some young sheng puerhs, it can mute the bitterness that obscures sweeter, earthier flavors). But a tea with delicate aroma can lose something in an unglazed pot, so it's not usually the best choice for a first or only teapot. Wall thickness helps determine if a pot is going to be especially good for a delicate green (thinner) or hearty puerh (thicker).
Some ceramics (e.g., yixing or zisha clays, and many others) have the reputation for changing the flavor of the water held in them, and for absorbing and then releasing the flavor teas in a way that enriches the flavor of teas brewed in it later. This is supposed to be related to things like the size of the pores in the pot and the chemical makeup of the clay. The patina of long use is particularly prized in some pots, and you can find many 'recipes' for seasoning a teapot to best effect for a particular tea. You can pay a lot of money for pots made from special clays by master artisans, and the 'best' are often counterfeited. Watch out when the claims about the pots and the prices are both very high.
Plastic
I have several Kamjove 'gongfu art' brewing devices, that hold tea and water in a top chamber to steep together, and then a turn of the lid or a push of a button releases the brewed tea through a strainer into a bottom pitcher from which you can pour the tea. They don't add any 'plastic' scent or flavor to the tea, and work well enough for teas I brew to fill my thermos for long meetings or drives. I consider these and similar devices made to sit directly on top of a mug to be quite useful, but they do not add the extra pleasure of handling nicely made glass or ceramic vessel during a tea session.
Types of vessels
The simplest brewing vessel is a glass or mug with some tea dropped into it. This works if: you're brewing a forgiving tea and you can sip the tea fast enough to avoid it getting bitter. One step more complicated is to brew the tea in a glass pitcher, such as a pint measuring cup, with the tea loose in it, then pour the tea through a strainer into another cup to drink. The main disadvantage to brewing this way is that it's awkward to get all the leaves back out of the strainer into the pitcher if you're going to brew more than one infusion; and again, you need to pour off all the tea when it's ready if it's a tea that would otherwise get bitter.
Gaiwans
The simplest brewing vessel after a single mug or pitcher is a gaiwan. This is a lidded cup, usually with a separate base, that works for just about any kind of tea. Most often they're porcelain, but you can find unglazed clay or glass too if you prefer.
You add tea and hot water, let steep,
and then tilt the lid slightly as you pour out the tea to use the gap between lid and the rim of the gaiwan to trap the tea leaves in the cup and let only the liquor out.
I like to hold the base of my small gaiwans along with the lid,
but I think the lid plus the of the bowl like this below is the more common grip.
It takes a little practice to handle one smoothly and avoid scorched fingers: it's a good idea to watch one being demonstrated (in person or there are plenty of videos on youtube), and to practice at least once with cool water, before trying to brew a tea with water at the boil.
Most of my gaiwans were quite cheap--$2.99-$3.99 at my local tea shop--cheap enough that I keep a group around for comparative tastings, so I can compare several teas brewed under essentially identical conditions.
One caution with a gaiwan: the lid should fit quite closely but not perfectly in the cup, because you want it to easily slip and tilt with just slight pressure of your fingers. One of the first ones I bought turned out to be almost unusable, because there was a slight ridge inside the rim of the glass bowl, and the lid was perfectly round and fit very snuggly against this ridge--making the needed tilt/opening quite tricky. It was sent off to goodwill soon after.
Teapots
Spout/strainer designs
A 'single hole' teapot has an interior hole continuous with the spout--the only thing that keeps the leaves in is careful pouring or the size of the leaf. A wire coil strainer can be fitted to the spout of a pot like this if desired. (I don't have any examples of this kind of pot in my collection, so no photo.)
Flat multi-hole strainers are just a few holes punched through the body of the pot at the spout. They work fine with most teas, but not always so well with very fine broken leaf teas, like senchas or CTC black teas. These are common in smaller ceramic pots, and I have several glass teapots with a variation on this design.
Ball-type strainers are rounded half-spheres that have more holes than a flat 5 or 7 hole strainer, and depending on the size of the sphere and the holes, may be more efficient than the flat hole strainers, or not. I've only seen these on ceramic pots.
Sasame strainers are a fancier variation on the same theme--a larger, many-holed filter piece fitted into the pot, and especially good for senchas.
Another filter type that I don't have in my collection is often seen in japanese pots with glazed interiors--a stainless wire mesh that wraps around the interior. These are very popular with people who drink a lot of tea with finely broken leaves--e.g., deep-steamed or fukamushi sencha--because they reportedly permit quick pours and rarely clog with the fine wet leaf bits.
Glass teapots
I have several that have a little strainer 'built in' to the spout. These are not quite fine enough to be practical with sencha teas--they let a lot of the little leaf through--but they work well enough for most other teas.
I don't use the glass pots quite as often as gaiwans because mine are larger than most of my gaiwans, and because I can pour the tea out faster from a gaiwan. So they're fine for teas where I'm brewing a few large infusions and where a few extra seconds to pour is not a problem--most white teas, lots of greens, and most oolongs--but not so good for really fast flash rinses of Dan Cong oolongs and puerhs. There are many quite similar pots that use a metal wire coil that fits the spout as a strainer, and while I've never owned one, they look equally practical, and I wouldn't hesitate to get one as a 'first and only' teapot.
This is a rather large glass teapot, with a metal infuser. It works very well for making large quantities of tea at once, but can't be used efficiently for small quantities, because the strainer holds the tea above the bottom of the pot, and a low water level confines the tea too much.
But I keep it for occasional brewing of larger batches of tea 'western style'--to fill my thermos, or for herbal teas (chamomile, hibiscus, mint, gamro, ginger) that really don't improve with a second brewing. The large basket gives the tea plenty of room to expand if I fill the pot, and the mesh strainer lets the water inside mix freely with the water outside it
I bought these infuser mugs because they looked cool--crystal clear, to let the tea really shine through--but soon came to hate their infuser design.
The slits cut into the glass are neither large enough to let the liquid move in and out of the infuser cup freely, nor small enough to keep from clogging with fragments of leaf. It's not fun to hold one up while it drains s l o w l y out, trying to avoid scorching your fingers, and trying to clean out the bits of leaf from the slits afterwards. I mostly use the mugs as mugs, with the infusers and lids staying on the shelf, or for occasional mugs of cold-brewed tea for hot weather.
Fully glazed ceramic teapots
These work pretty much the same as glass teapots if fully glazed inside,
but they come in a wider variety of thicknesses, and of course can be exceptionally beautiful when made by teaware artisans. They vary in size, wall thickness, clay type, and in the spout design--but even if there's only one large spout hole, you can probably get a wire coil filter to fit into it. Many japanese-made pots with glazed interiors have wire-mesh filters that circle the entire interior of the pot, including the spout.
Ceramic teapots with UNGLAZED interiors
These come in many varieties, including plain cheap little pots like those in this collection (none cost more than $16.99 at my local chinatown tea shop)
Or artisan-made pots like this porcelain beauty from Korean potter Seong-il
which is unglazed inside
And this kyusu from Petr Novak
is also unglazed inside.
The kyusu is a type of teapot with a side-fitted handle that can be especially convenient to use for japanese green teas with their finely broken leaves (watch out if you're left handed--it may not work as well for you).
But unless you want to get into the subtleties of different clays and their effects on water and teas (a subject for endless discussion among many tea connoissueurs), what matters in the beginning is simply the unglazed interior, which may hold over nuances of flavor from one tea brewed in it to the next.
Shiboridashi, houhin, and more....
There are many tea-brewing vessels that are something like a cross between a gaiwan and a conventional teapot. I really love my shiboridashi by Petr Novak,
which uses the fit of the lid over the notched spout as a strainer
In addition to paying attention to the size and material--especially whether the interior is glazed or not--the temperature at which you're going to use them is particularly important. They don't put as much distance between your fingers and the hot tea, so may work fine with cool-brewed white or green teas, but not as well with oolongs, puerhs, or black teas. I finally gave away this lovely little korean 'travel set'
because it scorched my fingers so much when I used it to brew puerhs, which are the principal teas I brew in very small volumes (because I brew many infusions from the same leaves). The shiboridashi pictured just above this set actually has some thick bits of glaze right where I like to put my fingers, so I can infuse teas with boiling water and still not burn them.
Putting it all together
"I want just one pot for all of teas": if you drink a variety of teas, you need a non-porous interior--glazed ceramic or glass are good choices. A gaiwan can be used for any tea, and so can a basic glass teapot, glazed ceramic teapot or kyusu. If you don't brew teas in very hot water (or have insensitive fingers), you might find a shiboridashi or korean tea set is very nice too.
If you brew western style, a nice 8-16 ounce european-style teapot may be just fine. If you brew gongfu, the size depends a lot on how many infusions you like to brew at one time. A 4-6 ounce pot will do almost everything you might want, if you don't mind occasionally combining infusions when you need a larger volume of teas. A gaiwan or shiboridashi of this size is straightforward to use; but larger gaiwans of 200 mL plus may be awkward to handle, depending on their design.
If you need really simple for use at work or on-the-go, there are a variety of plastic mug-top filters, infusers like the kamjove pictured at the top of this page, and even insulated travel cups with filter/strainers built in--but before you buy one of these 'travel' infusers, be sure that the teas you'll be brewing in it won't develop bitter or foul tastes if they sit in the water for up to several hours.
"I want a pot for green teas": if you won't be brewing flavored or strongly scented teas, to the above options, you can also add unglazed ceramic pots, kyusu, gaiwans, or shiboridashi. You may want a larger pot if you're going to brew western style (>8 ounces or 250 mL), but note that green tea (as well as white and sheng puerh) rarely holds that fresh-brewed flavor more than a few minutes after steeping, as the tea liquor will darken and the some bitter elements can develop or be revealed in the cooling cup.
If you brew senchas or gyokuro, you want to pay special attention to the filter, because these fine leaves will quickly clog a flat hole filter or smaller ball filter.
"I want to start gongfu brewing for oolong or puerh teas": a 100 mL porcelain gaiwan will brew anything once you get the hang of using it, and can be very inexpensive (like the $3.99 specials at my local shop). It's a great way to get started while you learn about teas, and from there you can decide if you need (or want) more specialized teapots.
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When picking a teapot, gaiwan, or other brewing vessel, you want to keep several things in mind: brewing style, the teas to be brewed, and whether this will be one vessel to brew all teas or one dedicated to just a particular type of tea. Brewing vessels come in different materials--some slick and nonabsorbent, or rough and porous; in different sizes--large for serving several people, small for personal brewing of a multiply-infused tea; and with different styles of filter or strainer--built in, added on, quick flowing or slow, and more or less easily clogged. Your preferences in brewing may require a fairly specialized pot or you can find one thing that does almost anything.
Styles of brewing (& relationship to teapot size):
'Western' brewing means making a single infusion from the tea leaves, e.g., putting a small amount of leaf in a pot, letting it steep in hot water for several minutes, pouring it out into a cup, and throwing out the wet leaves after that one batch is drunk. If you brew like this, a pot of 8 to 20 ounces or 250 to 500 mL is probably just right for 1-3 cups of tea per pot.
'Gongfu' brewing (aka 'gongfu cha') means taking a larger amount of leaf for the same size pot, pouring water over it, waiting a shorter time, pouring out and drinking that tea, and then adding more water to the same leaves, and making another infusion. This can go on, depending on your preferences and the type of tea, for four to twenty infusions, or even more for a few really exceptional teas. Brewing a little at a time lets you sip it while freshly brewed, and you can enjoy the evolution of flavor that often occurs with a really nice tea, where some flavors diffuse out into the liquid quicker than others.
Depending on the type of tea, you may want a small or very small teapot: I like my tea a little more dilute than most, and often get more steeps than other folks here because of that. I usually anticipate 3-4 steeps for white teas, 4-6 for green teas, 6-10 for oolongs, 10-20 for really fine Dan Cong oolongs, 1-3 for yunnan black teas, and 10-30 for puerhs.
Since I like to prepare a pint to a quart of tea per session for one person, I generally use a 4-6 ounce vessel for white or green teas, a 2-4 ounce vessel for oolongs or puerhs, and occasionally a 1 to 1 1/2 ounce vessel for Dan Cong oolongs or expensive aged sheng puerhs.
'Grandpa' style brewing is the simplest of all: putting the leaves directly in the cup you'll be drinking from, adding hot water, and sipping the tea from it, and is most often used for teas with particularly attractive leaves, like Tai Ping Hou Kui and Long Jing (Dragonwell).
I mostly do gongfu brewing, as many teas don't taste as good when they sit for a while before drinking--especially delicate whites and greens, but also Dan Congs and many sheng puerhs. So
Materials
Glass & glazed ceramic
Glass doesn't absorb the flavors of tea, so if well rinsed out after use, it won't carry over flavors from one tea to another. As glazed pottery is essentially clay coated with colorful glass, the same thing holds if a ceramic pot has a glazed interior. This makes these a good choice for a wide variety of teas, especially if you're only going to have one teapot for all teas. Since most glass teapots are fairly thin walled, they may not hold the heat as well as a thicker ceramic vessel, an important consideration if you're brewing long infusions with hot-brewed teas (oolongs, puerhs), where a thin glass or porcelain might cool off too much before the end of the infusion. It doesn't mute any flavors, which can be an advantage if you're brewing a tea with very special aromas.
Unglazed ceramic
A vessel that is unglazed on the inside can absorb and mute some flavors in a tea, which can be good (in some young sheng puerhs, it can mute the bitterness that obscures sweeter, earthier flavors). But a tea with delicate aroma can lose something in an unglazed pot, so it's not usually the best choice for a first or only teapot. Wall thickness helps determine if a pot is going to be especially good for a delicate green (thinner) or hearty puerh (thicker).
Some ceramics (e.g., yixing or zisha clays, and many others) have the reputation for changing the flavor of the water held in them, and for absorbing and then releasing the flavor teas in a way that enriches the flavor of teas brewed in it later. This is supposed to be related to things like the size of the pores in the pot and the chemical makeup of the clay. The patina of long use is particularly prized in some pots, and you can find many 'recipes' for seasoning a teapot to best effect for a particular tea. You can pay a lot of money for pots made from special clays by master artisans, and the 'best' are often counterfeited. Watch out when the claims about the pots and the prices are both very high.
Plastic
I have several Kamjove 'gongfu art' brewing devices, that hold tea and water in a top chamber to steep together, and then a turn of the lid or a push of a button releases the brewed tea through a strainer into a bottom pitcher from which you can pour the tea. They don't add any 'plastic' scent or flavor to the tea, and work well enough for teas I brew to fill my thermos for long meetings or drives. I consider these and similar devices made to sit directly on top of a mug to be quite useful, but they do not add the extra pleasure of handling nicely made glass or ceramic vessel during a tea session.
Types of vessels
The simplest brewing vessel is a glass or mug with some tea dropped into it. This works if: you're brewing a forgiving tea and you can sip the tea fast enough to avoid it getting bitter. One step more complicated is to brew the tea in a glass pitcher, such as a pint measuring cup, with the tea loose in it, then pour the tea through a strainer into another cup to drink. The main disadvantage to brewing this way is that it's awkward to get all the leaves back out of the strainer into the pitcher if you're going to brew more than one infusion; and again, you need to pour off all the tea when it's ready if it's a tea that would otherwise get bitter.
Gaiwans
The simplest brewing vessel after a single mug or pitcher is a gaiwan. This is a lidded cup, usually with a separate base, that works for just about any kind of tea. Most often they're porcelain, but you can find unglazed clay or glass too if you prefer.
You add tea and hot water, let steep,
and then tilt the lid slightly as you pour out the tea to use the gap between lid and the rim of the gaiwan to trap the tea leaves in the cup and let only the liquor out.
I like to hold the base of my small gaiwans along with the lid,
but I think the lid plus the of the bowl like this below is the more common grip.
It takes a little practice to handle one smoothly and avoid scorched fingers: it's a good idea to watch one being demonstrated (in person or there are plenty of videos on youtube), and to practice at least once with cool water, before trying to brew a tea with water at the boil.
Most of my gaiwans were quite cheap--$2.99-$3.99 at my local tea shop--cheap enough that I keep a group around for comparative tastings, so I can compare several teas brewed under essentially identical conditions.
One caution with a gaiwan: the lid should fit quite closely but not perfectly in the cup, because you want it to easily slip and tilt with just slight pressure of your fingers. One of the first ones I bought turned out to be almost unusable, because there was a slight ridge inside the rim of the glass bowl, and the lid was perfectly round and fit very snuggly against this ridge--making the needed tilt/opening quite tricky. It was sent off to goodwill soon after.
Teapots
Spout/strainer designs
A 'single hole' teapot has an interior hole continuous with the spout--the only thing that keeps the leaves in is careful pouring or the size of the leaf. A wire coil strainer can be fitted to the spout of a pot like this if desired. (I don't have any examples of this kind of pot in my collection, so no photo.)
Flat multi-hole strainers are just a few holes punched through the body of the pot at the spout. They work fine with most teas, but not always so well with very fine broken leaf teas, like senchas or CTC black teas. These are common in smaller ceramic pots, and I have several glass teapots with a variation on this design.
Ball-type strainers are rounded half-spheres that have more holes than a flat 5 or 7 hole strainer, and depending on the size of the sphere and the holes, may be more efficient than the flat hole strainers, or not. I've only seen these on ceramic pots.
Sasame strainers are a fancier variation on the same theme--a larger, many-holed filter piece fitted into the pot, and especially good for senchas.
Another filter type that I don't have in my collection is often seen in japanese pots with glazed interiors--a stainless wire mesh that wraps around the interior. These are very popular with people who drink a lot of tea with finely broken leaves--e.g., deep-steamed or fukamushi sencha--because they reportedly permit quick pours and rarely clog with the fine wet leaf bits.
Glass teapots
I have several that have a little strainer 'built in' to the spout. These are not quite fine enough to be practical with sencha teas--they let a lot of the little leaf through--but they work well enough for most other teas.
I don't use the glass pots quite as often as gaiwans because mine are larger than most of my gaiwans, and because I can pour the tea out faster from a gaiwan. So they're fine for teas where I'm brewing a few large infusions and where a few extra seconds to pour is not a problem--most white teas, lots of greens, and most oolongs--but not so good for really fast flash rinses of Dan Cong oolongs and puerhs. There are many quite similar pots that use a metal wire coil that fits the spout as a strainer, and while I've never owned one, they look equally practical, and I wouldn't hesitate to get one as a 'first and only' teapot.
This is a rather large glass teapot, with a metal infuser. It works very well for making large quantities of tea at once, but can't be used efficiently for small quantities, because the strainer holds the tea above the bottom of the pot, and a low water level confines the tea too much.
But I keep it for occasional brewing of larger batches of tea 'western style'--to fill my thermos, or for herbal teas (chamomile, hibiscus, mint, gamro, ginger) that really don't improve with a second brewing. The large basket gives the tea plenty of room to expand if I fill the pot, and the mesh strainer lets the water inside mix freely with the water outside it
I bought these infuser mugs because they looked cool--crystal clear, to let the tea really shine through--but soon came to hate their infuser design.
The slits cut into the glass are neither large enough to let the liquid move in and out of the infuser cup freely, nor small enough to keep from clogging with fragments of leaf. It's not fun to hold one up while it drains s l o w l y out, trying to avoid scorching your fingers, and trying to clean out the bits of leaf from the slits afterwards. I mostly use the mugs as mugs, with the infusers and lids staying on the shelf, or for occasional mugs of cold-brewed tea for hot weather.
Fully glazed ceramic teapots
These work pretty much the same as glass teapots if fully glazed inside,
but they come in a wider variety of thicknesses, and of course can be exceptionally beautiful when made by teaware artisans. They vary in size, wall thickness, clay type, and in the spout design--but even if there's only one large spout hole, you can probably get a wire coil filter to fit into it. Many japanese-made pots with glazed interiors have wire-mesh filters that circle the entire interior of the pot, including the spout.
Ceramic teapots with UNGLAZED interiors
These come in many varieties, including plain cheap little pots like those in this collection (none cost more than $16.99 at my local chinatown tea shop)
Or artisan-made pots like this porcelain beauty from Korean potter Seong-il
which is unglazed inside
And this kyusu from Petr Novak
is also unglazed inside.
The kyusu is a type of teapot with a side-fitted handle that can be especially convenient to use for japanese green teas with their finely broken leaves (watch out if you're left handed--it may not work as well for you).
But unless you want to get into the subtleties of different clays and their effects on water and teas (a subject for endless discussion among many tea connoissueurs), what matters in the beginning is simply the unglazed interior, which may hold over nuances of flavor from one tea brewed in it to the next.
Shiboridashi, houhin, and more....
There are many tea-brewing vessels that are something like a cross between a gaiwan and a conventional teapot. I really love my shiboridashi by Petr Novak,
which uses the fit of the lid over the notched spout as a strainer
In addition to paying attention to the size and material--especially whether the interior is glazed or not--the temperature at which you're going to use them is particularly important. They don't put as much distance between your fingers and the hot tea, so may work fine with cool-brewed white or green teas, but not as well with oolongs, puerhs, or black teas. I finally gave away this lovely little korean 'travel set'
because it scorched my fingers so much when I used it to brew puerhs, which are the principal teas I brew in very small volumes (because I brew many infusions from the same leaves). The shiboridashi pictured just above this set actually has some thick bits of glaze right where I like to put my fingers, so I can infuse teas with boiling water and still not burn them.
Putting it all together
"I want just one pot for all of teas": if you drink a variety of teas, you need a non-porous interior--glazed ceramic or glass are good choices. A gaiwan can be used for any tea, and so can a basic glass teapot, glazed ceramic teapot or kyusu. If you don't brew teas in very hot water (or have insensitive fingers), you might find a shiboridashi or korean tea set is very nice too.
If you brew western style, a nice 8-16 ounce european-style teapot may be just fine. If you brew gongfu, the size depends a lot on how many infusions you like to brew at one time. A 4-6 ounce pot will do almost everything you might want, if you don't mind occasionally combining infusions when you need a larger volume of teas. A gaiwan or shiboridashi of this size is straightforward to use; but larger gaiwans of 200 mL plus may be awkward to handle, depending on their design.
If you need really simple for use at work or on-the-go, there are a variety of plastic mug-top filters, infusers like the kamjove pictured at the top of this page, and even insulated travel cups with filter/strainers built in--but before you buy one of these 'travel' infusers, be sure that the teas you'll be brewing in it won't develop bitter or foul tastes if they sit in the water for up to several hours.
"I want a pot for green teas": if you won't be brewing flavored or strongly scented teas, to the above options, you can also add unglazed ceramic pots, kyusu, gaiwans, or shiboridashi. You may want a larger pot if you're going to brew western style (>8 ounces or 250 mL), but note that green tea (as well as white and sheng puerh) rarely holds that fresh-brewed flavor more than a few minutes after steeping, as the tea liquor will darken and the some bitter elements can develop or be revealed in the cooling cup.
If you brew senchas or gyokuro, you want to pay special attention to the filter, because these fine leaves will quickly clog a flat hole filter or smaller ball filter.
"I want to start gongfu brewing for oolong or puerh teas": a 100 mL porcelain gaiwan will brew anything once you get the hang of using it, and can be very inexpensive (like the $3.99 specials at my local shop). It's a great way to get started while you learn about teas, and from there you can decide if you need (or want) more specialized teapots.
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