Yixing teapots in Asian supermarkets?

Lewis snipped-for-privacy@panix1.panix.com1/28/04 10: snipped-for-privacy@panix.com

Aha!!** My cupboard contains a 10 year old Laphroaig, and a somewhat older one which I charge five dollars just to look at. Smokey. Grand. A man's whiskey. Indeed. Never thought of this comparison either. Well, Lew.....

Lew, I never knew. These are the more "honeyed," are they not? Screw tea. Let's move on.

Home rule for Scotland.

Michael

Yeah, well, now you know *all* my secrets.

Right. You might even say "fruity".

Good thing this group isn't moderated.

Brooklyn, too.

/Lew

Actually, it doesn't quite work that way. If you look around in your news reader, you'll probably find an option to "view all headers", or something similar. Two important ones you might see are "Message-ID" and "References". The message-id is a string that's unique for each message posted to usenet, and the references are a list of message ids that preceeded this one in the thread. The references header is how news readers do threading, not by subject lines.

So changing the subject line in any way won't do it; you need to use your news reader's "post article" command, instead of "post followup". Also, some newsreaders let you modify the headers of the post before you send it, and clearing out the references header will work too.

--David

Lewis snipped-for-privacy@panix1.panix.com1/28/04 15: snipped-for-privacy@panix.com

Lew, are you telling me we're *still* ruled from the mainland? Damn. Drinking Dan Cong and listening to Steeleye Span. Yum.

Michael

*snip*

Have you tried any of the Highland Park line? They've got a higher degree of peatiness than any of the non-island whiskies I've found and more finess IMO than the Islays (or pretty much anything else). Still though, when it's a blast of smoke I'm looking for Laphroaig CS fills the bill very nicely. Highland Park for elegance, Talisker for grandeur, Laphroaig for power.

Cameron

There are a few simple tests that tend to distinguish real yixing from fakes. Pick up the pot and place the base in the palm of your hand without touching the pot with your fingers. Remove the lid and

*gently* scrape the scrape the rim of the pot with the inner flange of the lid. The scraping should produce a fairly high, almost metallic, ringing tone (a higher tone generally means better clay). Next, look at the inside of the pot under bright and direct light; you should see little reflective diamond-like flecks in the clay if it is zisha.

There are many different types of clay used in yixing-ware items and these clays are often mixed together. The two simple tests above work for all genuine yixing pots that I have encountered thus far, but may not work for all clays.

I have never seen a good yixing pot in Chinatown, though your's may be better than mine. My source of choice nowadays is mandjs.com. I bought a set of two Zhou Jian Hua pots (around $50) and one by Zhang Quan Lin (also $50). All three are excellent and quite reasonably priced. After using the ZQL pot less than a dozen times (and avoiding any of my more esoteric seasoning methods) it has already acquired a pronounced tea fragrance. I haven't bought one of his cheap pots yet, but some look quite good.

Cheers,

Cameron

Cameron snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com2/9/04

18: snipped-for-privacy@mailandnews.com

Cameron, my instincts tell me that a lesser clay, fired high, would also ring thus. Perhaps, we are saying that a lesser clay would not tolerate the heat required to vitrify the clay to that degree?

I never thought to do that, but I'm going to now -- with trepedation, I might add. (Anyone here in the market for recently discovered YiXing forgeries?)

I have it on good authority that the really good quality gungfu pots once found in NYC Chinatown supermarkets are no more. Nowadays, you mostly get what you pay for, it seems.

Very encouraging. Thanks muchly. (I'm pondering as we speak.) Thanks too for the information above.

Michael

*snip*

The ring test is also quite effective at judging relative quality between actual yixing pots be they zisha, zhuni, duan ni, or whatever clay. I have a Zhou Jian Hua pot made of zhuni, and a Zhang Quan Lin pot of mixed brown zisha and some yellow clay (probably duan ni) that have incredibly high, steely ring tones and make very good tea. You may be right that a lesser clay can still have a high ring tone, you seem to have greater knowledge of pottery than me, but I've never seen a yixing forgery that had a particularly high ring. There are a number of other tests for yixing, but the two I gave are the easiest for novices.

Here are some tests of quality for a Yixing pot:

1. Check the fit of the lid. It should fit tightly. When rotated it should not bind or become loose and rattle, but rotate smoothly. With the spout pointed at the ground, the lid should not fall out.

1. When pouring (see if you can get the shop owner to let you try it out with water) you should be able to stop the stream by covering the vent hole in the lid. As long as the vent hole is blocked, the teapot should let only a few drops out, at most, even when the spout is pointing at the ground.

2. With the pot full of water, plug the spout with a fingertip and invert the pot. The lid should not fall out. I recommend having a hand or towel ready to catch the lid just in case *grin*.

1. The pot should pour smoothly and with vigour, emptying itself in a few seconds.

2. When you look at the inside of the pot you can expect to see some shallow toolmarks running radially out from the center. What you don't want to see is any gouges or projections in the clay. Lower quality work often has small fragments of clay that weren't removed before firing and are now stuck to the walls

1. This is a really qualitative test that takes a bit of experience. The clay should look "lively" even after being boiled. Good clay has a natural bright sheen (take a look at "Traditional" by Fan Xiao Long and "Copy of Drum" by Fan Chen Xia on mandjs to see what I mean). Even good rough-textured mixed clays will have some of this liveliness. Low quality clay tends to look quite dull after the initial boiling to break it in. Apparently some unscrupulous makers wax their pots to make them appear shiny, this coating disappears after boiling.

I hope this helps in your search. I consider it small, but I hope appropriate, thanks for your various informative posts and reviews.

Good Hunting,

Cameron Lewis

Cameron snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com2/10/04

13: snipped-for-privacy@mailandnews.com

Yes, it's really helpful, both for new information and review of the known. I'm realizing more and more that I perhaps got taken by SilkRoadTrade since their pots fail most of your tests, but still, no flaw in them, with the exception of one of the pots, is fatal. I'm learning a lot, so it's worth it. BTW, the pots I got from SRTrade are between 4.5 and 6 ounces, have a bright brick fire engine red/orange clay with sheen, some of that nasty nubbing within, and some of the shallow tool marks you mention. A mixed blessing.

I'm off to look at the pots you mention. What about her "Emperor's Lantern" and the others made of similar clay? What's your feeling there?

Michael

Yixing clay is found throughout the hilly southern area of the Yixing region of China. Geologists have pinpointed the origins of the clay in an area comprised of sedimentary lake deposits. Clay contains minerals which naturally produce a variety of earthy hues across the spectrum, ranging from a pale golden yellow to a soothing shade of deep purple. A principal factor in determining the depth of the color is the concentration of iron in the clay. The temperature used when firing the clay can create variations in the color as well.

There are different varieties of Yixing clay:

1. Zhu Ni is the rarest of them all. This is because it is known that Zhu Ni or Vermillion Red clay is limited in quantity. Much of this type of clay had been excavated in large quantities in the second half of the 20th century. As a result, it is depleted. It is said that such teapots would now costs thousands of dollars.
2. Duan Ni (or Banshanlu Ni) is a type of yellowish clay. This type of teapot is still rather common and can be found in large quantities. Unlike the Zhu Ni it is not known to have been depleted.

Both Zhu Ni and Duan Ni have countless types of imitations. Many of them are dyed clay to achieve the vermillion red or yellowish colors. Some unscrupulous teapots dealers even used ordinary red clay teapots and pass them off as Zhu Ni teapots.

1. Zisha is the most popular. It is also very common. It has been the representative colors of clay teapots from China. It also has imitations in the form of dyed clay. Original Purple clay from Yixing is said to have the best qualities for making teapots. Zisha clays are also fairly sandy, so another name for Yixing teapots is "purple sand teapots."

Yixing clay pottery is a mixture of three soils: the purple soil, the green soil and the red soil. The three soils are mixed according to need and the color desired. Then, it is fired at various temperatures depending on the soil composition. Various firing temperatures and clay content will create different "ring" and color.

Thanks for all the replies. Since I first started this thread, I ended up buying the teapot from the Asian market with the dragon theme. Although it may not be a 'true' Yixing teapot, I think it will function the same and I really liked the design. I tried some of your tests and the pot has a high ringing tone and some shiny flecks (almost all of which washed out when I first bought it). It also has the shallow toolmarks without any gouges, so it appears to be a decent quality pot. So far I've been using it for Pu'erh tea and the teapot has a very slight tea smell, but when I did a taste test compared to tea prepared in a regular glass pot, the tea made in the clay pot definitely tasted stronger. Maybe because it held the heat in better?

I've also purchased two other pots since I first posted. One was a small slate grey teapot purchased at a local Ten Ren tea shop. When I took it home I noticed a small Ten Ren symbol on the bottom, so I definitely know its not a true Yixing pot. I'm guessing that it will perform the same anyways. It has a nice Yin-Yang design to it that I liked, which somehow adds to my enjoyment of preparing the tea. The second pot is a small brown clay pot I got from Silk Road Trade that I plan to use for oolongs. On close inspection that one appears to be a lower level of finish than the one I bought in the market.

Like Michael said, I am learning a lot. I have my eye on a teapot offered by mandjs.com, even though I don't know what kind of tea I would brew in it yet. If some of the inexpensive pots they offer are still true Yixing pots, then maybe I can find out what the difference between higher and lower quality teapots are.