Glass and porcelain
White tea is the least processed category, so the material has less to intervene in.
What reaches the cup is close to what the garden produced, and a neutral vessel keeps it that way.
Glass is the traditional match for Silver Needle, and the reason is the bud.
A tall glass of 250 ml lets the buds rise and fall, and that movement is the point of the grade.
Porcelain hides the movement and gives control instead, which suits White Peony and Shou Mei.
Both materials are non porous, so neither one carries anything over from an earlier session.
Both also shed heat quickly, which young white tea needs.
Water at 85 °C is the ceiling for a young bud grade, and retained heat will push it past that.
A thick walled glass cup is still thick, and it will hold heat like a thick porcelain one.
Buy thin walls whatever the material, since thickness decides more of the outcome than the material does.
A white interior shows the liquor, and the colour of a white tea tells you about its age.
Young white tea is pale green and an aged one is amber, and a dark glaze hides the difference.
Clay
Clay is a material that keeps a record, and with white tea that record is mostly a problem.
Unglazed clay takes up aroma from the leaf and releases some of it into the next brew.
After a few weeks of one tea the pot has an opinion, and you are drinking that opinion too.
For a delicate Silver Needle the opinion is a loss, since the flower note is the whole tea.
Aged white tea is a different case, and it is the one place clay works in this category.
An aged cake brews at boiling and gives a darker liquor, and the extra heat retention helps.
A pot dedicated to aged Shou Mei develops a layer that its drinkers genuinely like.
Zisha（紫砂）is the material usually meant, and its pores are what do the work.
Those pores are also why a clay pot cannot be shared between an aged cake and a fresh bud grade.
The pot will still be holding the fermentation note when you brew the delicate tea.
That is a strong smell, and it sits exactly where a Silver Needle is most fragile.
One clay pot per tea is the rule, and it is a rule about absorption rather than about taste.
Matching to the tea
Match by age first, since that decides more than the grade does.
Young white tea wants glass or thin porcelain, and water below 90 °C.
Aged white tea and compressed white cake want porcelain or clay, and boiling water.
Those are two different teas in practice, and one vessel cannot serve both properly.
Match by grade second, because a bud grade and a coarse leaf brew at different speeds.
Silver Needle opens slowly over several infusions, and Shou Mei gives up almost everything at once.
Match by form last, and give the bud grade the height it needs to move.
A short cup stops the buds standing up, and a tall glass lets them.
Fix the dose at 5 grams in 100 ml and weigh it to 0.1 g, since bud grades are bulky.
Once the dose is fixed, the material is the smallest of the three decisions.
Anyone who tells you the pot matters more than the harvest is selling pots.
Freshness, age and grade, in that order, and material somewhere below all three.
Buying advice
Buy a tall glass for the bud grades and a porcelain gaiwan for everything else.
Those two pieces cost less than one decent clay pot and cover the whole category.
A gaiwan of 100 ml takes boiling water and rinses clean of any fermentation smell.
Check the glaze is intact and the lid sits flat before you pay for either one.
Avoid anything sold as zisha（紫砂）for under twenty dollars, which will be slip cast and tinted.
Real hand built clay costs real money, and cheap ware claiming to be it is a risk.
Warm an empty clay pot and smell it, and walk away from any chemical note.
Buy clay only after a year of drinking one aged white tea regularly.
Until then the money belongs in the leaf, since a 10 year old cake and a fresh one are different drinks.
Storage decides which of those you are holding, and no vessel can correct a badly kept cake.
Hold 30 seconds on a young tea and longer on an aged one, and taste as you go.
Cheap neutral ware and well kept leaf, and the category opens up on its own.