TeaChat

Margules wrote:

tingjunkie wrote: This little pot craps all over the theory that you can tell a pot's quality by it's sound! I bought it for $25 and it sounds almost as good as any pot in Hou De's

Any high fired and reasonably dense ceramic should "ping" like that. In fact, it is a fairly common method to quickly determine if vintage porcelain pieces have any small chips or cracks. I imagine that slip cast pots frequently ring nicely, as the uniform thickness that slip casting allows is good for resonance.

It sounds like a nice pot though, so perhaps it would be better to say that it craps on the theory that you can tell a pots price by it's sound...

Even though the "ringing" theory is kinda flaky, there's definitely a difference between the ringing of a slip cast and a nice pot. My crappy slip-cast pots "ring," but it's very metallic and not very pleasant...but yeah, the ping test doesn't tell much

I think there is something to the ringing theory. High fire pots make nice ringing noise, while low quality, slip casts make a thud. However, high quality zini and to some extent, hong ni, don't seem to fit this pater.

I love the shape of that pot omt. She's pretty! How much leaf do you usually use for DHP? Judging by the size of the pot, I'd guess you like to fill her up.

Margules wrote: By the way, I checked out the theteagallery.com website and didn't see any yixing. Am I looking in the wrong place?

FWIW, I believe these are the same ones sold by Bill Lee @ China Flair in Canada.
http://chinaflairtea.com/

Fairly expensive for modern pots. Depending on the exchange rate, might be a little cheaper to buy from there.

Tea Gallery also sells older Yixing and other teaware, but generally it's not up on their site. You'd have to contact them or visit them in person. From past experience, they will send you pictures via email if you ask.

tingjunkie wrote:

I am very much surprised this is from Chinatown and is in an affordable price range! Not matter what quality it is (since I don't know how to tell clay quality), it is not low quality and the painting on it looks beautiful! This is way better than any Chinatown teapot that I had imagined

Last time in Boston Chinatown, I saw a bunch of ugly slip cast teapots in a special room of a bookstore titled something like "Chinese Yixing Culture Exhibition" and most of them are more expensive than yours.

edkrueger wrote:However, high quality zini and to some extent, hong ni, don't seem to fit this pater.

That's because "quality" is not necessarily what determines what a pot sounds like when rung. It is all a matter of resonance. Zini is lower fired, and therefore has a different molecular structure, with larger pores, and a different crystalline structure, which affects the quality of the ring.

Certain shortcuts taken when making a cheap pot can also affect the resonance of a pot, such as a non-uniform wall thickness, or asymmetry, but those problems can occur with hand made pots just as easily as slip casts.

Yes, that was what I was implying.

OMT, fyi, yours is Gong Ju, too, just more modern. According to Gingko, this was a tribute bureau in late Qing.

That is an awesome pot TJ! Must remind myself to send you a PM about NYC Chinatown before I visit...

wyardley wrote:

Margules wrote: By the way, I checked out the theteagallery.com website and didn't see any yixing. Am I looking in the wrong place?

FWIW, I believe these are the same ones sold by Bill Lee @ China Flair in Canada.
http://chinaflairtea.com/

Fairly expensive for modern pots. Depending on the exchange rate, might be a little cheaper to buy from there.

Tea Gallery also sells older Yixing and other teaware, but generally it's not up on their site. You'd have to contact them or visit them in person. From past experience, they will send you pictures via email if you ask.

Yes, it is indeed the same pot as China Flair. I was told it was a special commission by Bill Lee using a particularly good batch of modern clay. Even with the exchange rate, I paid a little less at TG. Worth every penny so far too.

Gingko- thanks for the nice comments on my Chinatown find. FWIW, when I bought my pot at the Tea Gallery, I also brought along this pot in hopes of getting an opinion from the crew there. We did a 3 way head to head comparison with my two pots as well as a third hong ni pot from the 70's, and we all agreed the Chinatown pot stood shoulder to shoulder with the 70's pot in terms of taste and mouthfeel. I was shocked. Sometimes you just get lucky.

Maitre_Tea- Yes indeed! You said February, right? Let me know when you will be here so I can schedule a meeting of the NYC Tea Club to coincide with your visit. I'm sure we could work in a trip to the secret Yixing store as well! And by the way... you should post some photos of that beautiful blended zhu ni pot you got from Hou De. It had the coolest chop I have ever seen!

Here is a shot of the pot's other side. If anyone knows what it says, I would be very grateful!

*This is a most dangerous thread...and it will seriously test my will to resist temptations*

Even though we all want to see the "best" pots we have to offer, it's also important to show what mistakes we've made so we can come to terms with the fact that we all have to pay tuition of some kind...



These are just a few of the crappy slip-cast pots I picked up in China...at the price of about $7 USD each. I obviously overpaid. These represent some of the worst pots I have ever seen.

Clay: Duan Ni of some kind? "rings" a creepy and off-putting metallic sound
Size: Approx 300 ml
Age/Year: Modern-modern
Walls: Medium
Pour: decent, but the lid fit is terrible and when I put my finger over the water spout it doesn't do anything! Some of these don't even have water spouts!
Source: Shanghai, China
Tea Pairing: None at the moment. I had bought eight of these thinking I could have all my bases covered...but once I got my hands on some quality pots (once I was back in the states, ironically), these were never used again. I keep them as only a warning to myself and to others: never rush too fast. For the amount I paid for these pots I could've gotten a decent older pot.

PS: I'll be in the city from 2/3-2/7. When do you all usually meet? Some night during the week would be great, but Friday night would be great as well. I'm planning to troll through all of Thursday and Friday (while the friends I'm crashing with are at work) in Chinatown for tea ware...mostly new/"antique" porcelain, but I would love to find a yixing like yours!

Clay: Zini
Size: 100-120 ml
Age: Modern
Bought from: Shouzhen zisha teapot
Walls: Medium/ Medium Thick
Pour: Decent to Good.
Tea pairing: Wuyi Yancha

I choose this pot for yancha based on its low and flat shape, it can accommodate those rare 3-4 inch long leaves sometimes found in certain Wuyi's. It seems to slightly cut some of the intensity of wuyi's even with 20-30 second steeps right after the rinse. Especially with seasoning this imparts a nice sweetness to the tea, like the sweetness from a carmalized vegetable which is usually there with yancha, but it seems to be emphasized in this pot.

Clay: Chao Zhou clay
Size: 120 ml
Age: Modern
Bought from: Tea Habitat
Walls: Very thing
Pour: Good? I honestly don't notice these things except for when it's painfully obvious it's slower, i.e. my silver-lined pot from Nada.
Tea pairing: This is an instance of when the tea I wanted this pot to go with (DC) didn't do so well, so I had to do something else. This is the cheaper line up of her pots, and I felt like there was something missing, i.e. aroma and some notes, whenever I used this pot. IMHO, DC is best brewed with an egg shell thinned vessel. So when I started getting to pu-erh I tested this out, and it smoothed out some of the rough edges.

I'm surprised at how much of a patina it has picked up since the switch to young sheng (only two months ago), and it has more of a shine than any of my other pots! Especially good for patina...Xiaguan productions!

Clay: Old Zhuni. high fired.
Size: 100 ml
Age/Year: 60's.
Walls: Thin
Pour: Smooth +/- 5 sec. Straight / No drips.
Source: Old Hong Kong Collector
Tea Pairing: Traditional High Fired Wuyi SX
Info: The ring from the lid-on-handle sounds like a clear bronze bell, bright, deep and hallow. The workmanship is one of the rare find on such small Zhuni 'Square' style. Each direction of the hexagon lid fits perfectly on every facet, and the pour from this 'Lady's arm' feels like a cannon.

Absolutely gorgeous TIM! Is that one of the new acquisitions, or is it one you have used for a while? How would you describe the effect on the high fired Wuyi?