Yixing teapot
Posted on
A genuine Yixing teapot or "cha-hu" is a collectible item whose value is likely to only increase. It rises as the fame of the master who sculpted it grows, whose brand is necessarily emblazoned on every Yixing teapot both outside and inside.
Each year, the Yixing city municipality, with the support of local art associations, publishes a catalog listing all Yixing teapot makers and their students, with the current rank of each. At present, they number over five thousand people. Every year, someone drops out of the rating due to the transition to retirement or to the other world, someone moves up, and someone is added to its beginning as an apprentice. The rank of Yixing master grows as he improves and as his achievements are recognized by art academies and associations. The price of his brand is also growing, and with it the value of his Yixing teapots that have already been sold.
The advantage of the Yixing teapot as a gift is that if the donee already has another Yixing teapot, he will only be even more happy with the new one. Those who do not understand Yixing teapots at all, have never heard of them and see them for the first time usually intuitively understand that before their eyes they have a high-quality elegant thing very pleasant to look at and touch, with impeccable taste made in a stylish ethnic artistic tradition. Such a light miniature and harmonious work of applied art.
The Yixing master who has achieved success has students. Experienced students in quality of work may not be inferior to the master, but perhaps it's just not yet time to recognize their merits in the official rating. The time will come, and with it will grow the fame of their the brand. As long as time passes, and it flows to the owner's mill, the Yixing teapot can and should be educated, it will only become more valuable. A well cherished Yixing teapot significantly benefits in comparison with the new one.
Properties of clay Yixing teapots
Yixing clay is ideal for teapots. It is porous, so that the tea in the dish from it is enriched with oxygen and bright taste opens. Teapots from Yixing are valued because their unglazed surface absorbs traces of the taste of the drink, creating an increasingly complex flavor in each new brew. Over time, during use, the pores of the walls of the Yixing teapot are filled with the smell of your favorite tea. If you like different types of tea, such as GABA tea and Pu-erh, it is better to bring up a separate Yixing teapot for each of them.
The porous sides of the Yixing teapot slowly cool down due to the low heat transfer — the Yixing teapot keeps the temperature well. The peculiarity of Yixing clay also consists in significant quantity of the mineral kaolinite, which is a heat-resistant base of porcelain. That is why the Yixing kettle is strong and solid, it is baked at a temperature of 12000 C and above, and at such temperatures, ordinary clays simply melt. The Yixing teapot can have thin sides like high-quality porcelain-only one or two millimeters, which is difficult to imagine for ordinary non-glazed clay.
In Yixing itself, the geological resources of high-quality clay are almost exhausted, and real Yixing teapots are very expensive. The price is also affected by the fact that due to the shortage of raw materials, famous high-level masters work with it. This not only raises the price of new Yixing teapots, but also attracts fakes to the market. The family clans of potters, and in Yixing about 70% of the population belongs to them, from generation to generation accumulated a fair supply of selected Yixing clay. Every year, these stocks are growing in price, slowly dwindling due to the release of new Yixing teapots. A kilogram of high-quality clay can cost several thousand dollars. Teapots are also becoming more expensive, because stocks of original clay are reduced and the cost of their production is growing. The wages of masters are also growing.
The original Yixing clay teapot is slightly rough to the touch, but it looks matte and has a nice greasy shine. This shine is due to both the properties of baking the clay, and its careful manual processing. Yixing teapots are not cast, they are made entirely by hand. The master sculpts each teapot from a piece of clay, usually looking at the kettle whose style he wants to repeat. Each Yixing teapot is unique in some way-there are no two completely identical teapots, but the canons and styles in which most Yixing teapots are made have developed.
Yixing teapots are black, blue, and green, but they are usually dark red or yellow. The quality of the surface of the clay allows you not to glaze it. There are a variety of decor examples of teapots, including covered on the outside with other varieties of clay or inlaid with them, with stucco elements in the form of animals or plants and their fruits, imitations of wood. The technique of clay inlay is very unusual, it allows you to create patterns on Yixing teapots or colorful inclusions, without using any dyes.
Among the varieties of ornamental Yixing clay distinguish purple clay "zisha" or "zini", it is extracted on a variety of crafts, but most of it is developed at the "Yíxīng Zǐshā Factory Number 1", where there is a huge showroom of products from it. In the burnt state, zisha clay acquires dark shades of maroon or red-brown, sometimes to purple, which depends on the variations of the firing process. The reason for this is the high content of iron in it.
Another local variety of clay "duan ni" (fortified clay) is green. Duan-Ni after firing becomes yellow-brown, yellow-green depending on the temperature in the oven, and after the hottest firing (over 12500 C) even blue. This type of clay contains a large number of different minerals, including mica, cinnabar, quartz in various forms, fossilized silt, due to the reinforcement of which the burnt crock acquires the hardness of porcelain. From such clay it can be made even more subtle. The mixture of these clays in various proportions gives an infinitely varied range of shades.
Making Yixing teapots
The clay extracted for the production of teapots in Yixing is petrified. In this state, it is impossible to sculpt it. The clay goes through a long process of preparation, including grinding, sifting, soaking, and so on. Long to describe these operations does not make sense, but at the end of them is a plastic wet lump of clay. To give a completely uniform plasticity, the apprentice fairly beats it with a wooden mallet. Now it is ready for sculpting.
First, the potter kneads the clay into a thin sheet to the thickness of the walls of the Yixing teapot (only one or two millimeters) and cuts out a round bottom and side walls. Connects them, forming a three-dimensional shape of the vessel and carefully forms the seams. Where the spout of the kettle will be attached, the potter cut holes for draining water and then attach the spout and handle. The inner and outer walls of the Yixing teapot are smoothed and polished with wooden tools, after which the lid is formed with a "pearl" - holder. Through the pearl the potter make a hole in the lid of the Yixing teapot. If you close it with your finger, not a drop of water will pour out of the spout of a tilted or inverted Yixing teapot. So you can check the quality of the kettle.
The sidewalls of the Yixing teapot are sometimes decorated with carvings. First, the calligrapher applies hieroglyphs with ink using a brush. Then he cuts them out, plunging them into the clay not deep, a fraction of a millimeter with a sharp little cutter. This is a very delicate, painstaking work, it is akin to the work of a jeweler. At the bottom of the Yixing teapot, the author's seal is stamped on the outer and inner sides. A day the master makes one or two Yixing teapots.
How to evaluate the quality of the Yixing teapot
There are a few simple recipes to assess offhand the quality of the Yixing teapot:
It looks great. It's nice to stroke and it looks amazing. Like I wrote about my favorite cat? However, the Yixing teapot is hypoallergenic.
Take the Yixing teapot in your hands and it will be lighter weight than it seemed before you took it.
The inside of the Yixing teapot is as smooth as the outside. There are no traces of casting-surface pores, protruding seams, irregularities at the joints. It is sculpted entirely by hand.
The level of the top of the handle, the spout and the neck of the Yixing teapot form a single line — "water level". Remove the lid, turn the kettle over, put it on the table and see for yourself.
To the touch, the sides of the Yixing teapot are thin, slightly thicker than good porcelain. There may be a thicker layer on the top and on the lid so as not to burn your fingers. Cast cheap teapots are easy to distinguish — the thickness of their walls is the same, and the surface does not have a grainy rough structure.
The lid fits perfectly to the neck of the kettle. Water does not penetrate through its edges no matter how you turn it. The lid should be as tight as possible to close the Yixing teapot — this will allow the brewing process to preserve the entire aroma of tea leaves.
If you plug the hole in the lid, the water from the spout of the tilted or inverted Yixing teapot does not flow. If you plug the spout, it does not flow from the hole in the lid.
One simple way to check is to fill the Yixing teapot with water about 2/3 full and turn it over, tightly plugging the spout hole with your finger. The lid should not fall out, it will remain tightly closed.
Tea leaves do not fall into the spout, do not clog it, in the Yixing teapot there is a built-in strainer made of clay.
The jet from the spout flows smoothly continuously, without air inclusions, does not gurgle. . The tea should flow out quickly, straight and smooth, not drip. If the flow is too slow, the tea leaves will be too overcooked.
The spout should allow all the tea to flow out completely without any residue. Open the Yixing teapot and make sure that there is no liquid left in it.
The smell of clay. New Yixing teapots usually do not smell, but some incorrect teapots have an unpleasant clay smell that will seriously affect the taste of your tea.
Kettle care
Tea utensils from Yixing should never be washed using detergents, but only with water otherwise the Yixing teapot will give off a chemical smell of flavoring.
Do not put the Yixing kettle in the dishwasher.
Look at the choicest Yixing teapots
See what varieties of original proven Yixing teapots can be purchased with a guarantee of super quality.