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| It is said if you use a Yixing teapot for many years, you can brew tea just by pouring boiling water into the empty pot. This is just one properties of these little teapots. For hundreds of years, Yixing (pronounced yeeshing teapots are said to be superior to all other types of pots for brewing The special zisha clay (containing iron, quartz and mica, and found only in Yixing) from which they are made absorbs the flavors of the tea and the teapot becomes more seasoned with each use. Yixing teapots have an interesting history that dates back to the Sung Dynasty (960 - 1279) when purple clay was first mined around Lake Taihu in China. Their unpretentious earthy tones and subtle beauty flourished and matured in the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1573 - 1911). The pots are made from the signature clay of Yixing, an area situated 120 miles northwest of Shanghai in Jiangsu province. In the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, scholars variously praised, made, inscribed and collected this renowned classic Chinese art form. Now as then, each piece is shaped by hand on a potter's wheel and left unglazed, both because it makes better tea and because doing so allows the color of the clay to shine through. Highly prized for its porous nature, which is excellent at absorbing the flavor of tea, Yixing clay occurs naturally in three characteristic colors: light buff, cinnabar red and purplish brown. Other colors are created by mixing these three or adding mineral pigments; for example, the dusty black color is obtained by mixing in cobalt oxide and the blue color is made by mixing in magnesium oxide. A principal factor in determining the depth of the color is the concentration of iron in the clay. All the characteristic Yixing colors are called zisha, but the most celebrated of all Yixing wares is its zishayao, or purple sandware, in which a relatively high concentration of iron produces a deep purplish brown color, sometimes called "pear-skin." Western tastes tend to run to a wider range of colors other than the prized zishayao. Traditionally, Yixing pots were small so that each person might have their own. Also known as yishing teapot. Known as the "pottery capital" of China, Yixing is located 120 miles northwest of Shanghai. Its reputation for producing exquisite teapots dates back to the Ming Dynasty(1368-1644). Along with the earliest tea shipments to Europe came distinctive red earthenware teapots from Yixing, initiating a tea drinking tradition that continues today. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
