What's Zisha Yixing Teapot?

• What's Purple Clay -- as westerners translates what Chinese refereed to as: Purple Sand?
  

Is it a clay? Is it a sandy mud? It's not clay and it's not sandy mud. It's a special kind of rock which is mostly mineral deposits found under the ground near Yixing city. Nowadays the rock after it's mined are grounded by the machine with water, then it's filtered. The paste (just like the bean paste) is then used to make the teapots. This paste is called Zisha Sand, because it contains very fine sandy particles. It's all because of this special format of mineral paste that made Zisha Yixing teapot so famous and fine craftsmen's teapot are sold easily and well over 10,000 yuan in China.

• Why Yixing teapot makes the best tea?

Yixing Zisha comes in Five Natural Colors: Most Common -- Purple where the name come from, Golden Yellow, Red, Green, White Beige! We have some beautiful Home Deco plates made of Natural Zisha!

1) Because the special zisha paste contains sandy particles. the teapot after it's fired has tiny tiny porous surface, the tea in the pot can breath. Tea left in the pot on hot days out of the refrigerator can be kept three days and still fresh.

2) When the teapot is being used everyday, the tea taste and tea oil soak into the teapot. This enhances the tea your are drinking. People believe Yixing teapot can make fine taste tea without any tea leaves, because the tea taste contained in the pot can just turn hot water into tea after the pot has been used long enough.

2) Zisha paste has no lead, unlike clay. Statistics in China shows the mineral deposits are very healthy for people who has high blood pressure, high cholesterol. It promotes longevity.

3) Zisha paste do not glaze under fire. So new teapots do not shine.  But it's rich contents of minerals makes these teapot very unique and becomes one of the hottest ornamental collector's items for scholars. This is because the more the teapot is being used,  the more beautiful the teapot becomes. The daily touching, rubbing, and making tea, makes the pot shinier and shinier everyday. Old teapot has very beautiful and fascinating patinas after used for some time.

• Why famous Yixing teapot masters are so much appreciated?

After you understand the incredible craft of making Yixing teapot, you will understand why. First the beauty of the teapot not just comes from it's fine craftsmanship, but also comes from the design, beautiful geometry, and elegance. This depends so much on the masters talent, sophistication in education, and appreciating of art. We will not getting into this too much.

  Here we will just show you how Yixing teapot is made and what kind of craftsmanship is required to make one teapot.  Each part of the teapot is separately hand made --- teapot body, bottom, spout, cover, and handle. Because the material is mineral paste, the teapot body cannot be turned on an electric tuner. Rather

1) It's  knocked flat from a piece of paste with a wooden hammer. Then folded to make the cylinder.

2) Where the connecting seam is squeezed smooth and where later was used to mount the spout to hide any tiny uneven marks.

The hand molded cylinder is then put on a small wooden wheel. With a small wooden paddle continuously pad on the cylinder with one hand and the other  hand inside the cylinder and the fingers up against the surface to  make the cylinder into any shape and thickness that the artist had in mind for the teapot. Any extra paste is squeezed toward where the spout is going to be mounted. As you can now see, just to get a perfect round body is a lot of work.

  Then the teapot bottom is cut and made cut perfectly to be mounted onto the body, same as the spout and handle. The opening for the cover is specially formed according to it's style.

Master Ge Tao at Work!

The surface of teapot is finely smoothed again and again before it's left to dry. As you can see every maker has a big covered urn near their foot to leave their unfinished parts in. A special character of these Yixing paste make this lengthy procedure possible, they are not easy to dry. Very fine teapots sometimes takes several weeks to finish.

  Calligraphy, designs, or other engravings are engraved with a sharp steel knife.

  Finally when the artist is satisfied with their creation, the teapot is fired in the churn around 1175 degrees. Well fired Yixing teapot can endure over three hundred pounds of force. We saw a man of over $250 pounds standing on one of the teapot.

Master Jianrong's student at work!

What are you looking for in a Yixing Teapot

• Made of Genuine Zisha paste --- One way of identifying it is it's crisp metallic sound when tapped on the rim of the opening. Pure Zisha is mostly mineral deposits, this is where the crisp metallic sound come from. Some cheap ones are using material mixed with ordinary mud, not just it might contain lead, it usually is turned on an electric turner. The mud makes it turnable. But they usually have a very dull sound. After the teapot is already soaked in water, the sound changes very much. So this can only be used to identify teapot before the pot is in any water.

• Genuine Zisha Yixing teapots are not cheap. The resource of the filtered zisha is limited and the exploration of Zisha rocks are controlled by the government. Many cheap teapots are made from industry Zisha. Not meant to make into teapot. These teapot can be easily identified, they usually have a very coarse look.

• Genuine Zisha Yixing teapot is even more appreciated. Similar materiel is found in Anhui and Zhejian province. But their character is not the same as Yixing Zisha. At tourist place, many of them are made in Zhejian province, then shipped to Yixing market. This is why you can see these nice looking teapots sell for very little money on the street.

• Very light, thin, and small teapots are more expensive than larger teapots, much higher craftsmanship applied.We have many small personal teapots. Used by one person or with another friend.  The teapot that we recommend for people's daily use are very high quality and sold in high end gift shops in China and exported to Taiwan.  They are fine craftsmanship and made of genuine Yixing Zisha.

• Simplest form Zisha Yixing teapot are most appreciated by collectors. When the form is simple, beauty comes from pure elegance and high craftsmanship! As you get intimate with Zisha, you will understand this!

• As you can see, Jianchen has a Yixing teapot that he keeps with him everywhere. Most Chinese drink directly from the spout, something which most Americans will never do. Jianchen have his sips between his strokes!
  

• How to take care of a Yixing Teapot?

When you get a new Yixing teapot, most of the time, it did not touched any water yet. Because the maker or the seller usually want you to be able to tap out the crisp metallic sound. So you need to wash out or rinse thoroughly the Zisha bits in the teapot. If makes you feel better, you can wash with soap. If you will use the teapot to drink green tea, put a lot not so good green tea in the pot, add a lot of hot water and let it soak for a few hours. This will season the pot a little bit. I like to season the pot for hours by letting it sit on the stove for some time with low heat on.

After you used the teapot, you will never need to wash with soap again. Just rinse off the tea leaves in the pot every time you use it.