茶の粉末をすくう「茶杓」は、お茶に関心のない方にはただの竹ヘラにしか見えないかもしれません。中国の宋時代の茶書を読むと、当時は金属製の匙で茶をすくい、また撹拌もしたようです。

日本では、初期は輸入品の象牙が使われており、現在でも格式の高い点前には象牙が用いられます。この象牙を安価な竹で模倣したのが、竹茶杓のはじまりです。千利休の時代に、節を中心に配置する現行の形が完成しました。

People without any interest in tea culture may think that the tea scoop is just a spatula made of bamboo.
Looking at textbooks on tea culture written in the Song dynasty (960–1276) in China, people seem to have scooped and stirred tea with metal spoons.

In the early days of Japanese tea culture, Japanese people used tea scoops made of ivory, which were imported from China. Even now Japanese tea practitioners still use antique ivory scoops on very formal occasions.

Japanese people came to make tea scoops of bamboo, which grows widely in Japan, in imitation of expensive ivory ones. The present style of tea scoop, which has one of the bamboo joints in the middle of the handle, was perfected in the era of Sen Rikyû in the 16^th century.