The division that organises everything
Chanoyu prepares matcha: powdered shaded tea whisked in a bowl with water taken from a kettle that never leaves the fire. Senchado prepares sencha and gyokuro: leaf tea steeped in a small pot and poured into small cups. Every difference between their utensils follows from that one difference in what is being made. A bowl and a whisk against a pot and cups; a ladle against a spout; a hearth against a table stove. Neither is a simplified version of the other.
The chanoyu set
The kettle is a kama — no spout, no handle, set over a hearth, with water lifted out by a bamboo ladle called a hishaku, which rests with the kettle lid on a small stand called a futaoki. Cold water comes from a lidded jar, the mizusashi, and rinse water goes into an open vessel, the kensui. Powder is held in a lacquered natsume for thin tea or a ceramic chaire for thick tea, measured with a bamboo chashaku, whisked with a chasen in a chawan and wiped with a folded cloth. The hearth alternates seasonally between a sunken ro in the cold months and a portable furo in the warm ones.
The senchado set
A small pot, often with a side handle, and small cups on a tray. Water is boiled in a thin earthenware kettle, the bofura, on a small white clay charcoal stove, the ryoro. Water is cooled in a yuzamashi before it goes near the leaf, because the teas the practice is built around are brewed well below boiling. The forms derive visibly from Chinese literati tea rather than from chanoyu, and that lineage is why the equipment looks the way it does.
The historical shape, hedged
TeaHQ's own reading of well-attested general knowledge, with no single source behind it.
Chanoyu is conventionally traced through the sixteenth century and associated above all with Sen no Rikyu; senchado is conventionally traced to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and associated with the monk known as Baisao and with a literati enthusiasm for Chinese steeped tea in reaction to established practice. TeaHQ gives both as the conventional account. They are repeated in nearly every English-language treatment, they are not verified here against a primary source, and the dates and attributions should be read accordingly.
What this means for a reader who owns none of it
Almost nothing here is domestic equipment and TeaHQ does not present it as such. Someone making matcha at home needs a bowl, a whisk, a sieve and a stand, and can get water from any kettle. Someone brewing sencha needs a kyusu and a way to cool water, and a mug will do for the cooling. The rest of both sets belongs to practices with their own teachers, their own rooms and their own reasons, and a shopping list is the wrong way to encounter them.