http://hojotea.com/item_e/mumyoi.htm
HOJO has two different series of teapot: Mumyoi teapot and Nosaka teapot. Mumyoi teapot is the traditional style. Artist uses a mixture of two types of clay, red and yellow. However we wanted to increase the purity of red clay to almost 100%. Together with the artist, we carried out series of experiment to find out the suitable type of red clay, percentage of respective clay, baking temperature and baking method. Lately, we managed to introduce Shimizu Ken's product that is made of new clays developed by our collaboration R&D.
We are also introducing another series called Nosaka. The property of Nosaka is similar to Yixing Zhuni in terms of the color of clay and its performance to the taste of tea.
These two new clays is very suitable for all types of tea, including ripe and raw puerh, Taiwan oolong, Japanese tea, Phoenix oolong and Wuyi oolong.
4. How's the performance compared to the Yixing clay?
When I tried the traditional Sado rec clay teapot for the first time, I was very impressed. Its performance was almost the best amongst Japanese clays. I have conducted tasting side by side with various kinds of Yixing Zhuni teapot as well. Sadly the performance of Yixing clay was outstanding and it was far beyond the performance of Sado red clay. However I felt there would be a better clay, other baking method or techniques that could improve the performance of Japanese teapot. After series of my research work with the artist, I have improved the performance of clay progressively. Finally, we managed to produce the Sado natural red clay teapot which performs much better than any Yixing teapot that I owned. I have various kinds of zhuni teapot made by Yixing artist and some were made before cultural revolution. With our latest lineup of Sado red clay teapot, the taste of tea becomes extremely smooth. If you drink the water that pour through the Sado teapot, you can feel a very sticky and sweet texture of water.