Where to buy a real Yixing teapot

[bagua7]

Well, I think I will just give up and consider my collection complete.

You are being wise, certainly online, as I said earlier. But wait, don't give up yet! If you ever decide to travel to Asia (and who knows accidentally make contacts with the right people) then you'll have the chance to own every "pirate's greatest dream."

Good luck!

[brunogm]

Tingjunkie, I already have a modern zhuni teapot.

Bagua, sometimes I go to Asia, maybe once every two years. I go to Beijing or Kuala Lumpur. Also, someone in my team is based in Beijing and I could ask him to find me a pot. Problem is that he does not know anything about teapots and will probably buy the wrong thing.

Anyway, are there good teashops in Beijing or Kuala Lumpur?

[ethan]

brunogm, "buying the wrong thing" can easily be done by anyone, expert or ignoramous (imho). W/ a year of using yixing, I have 2 pots that do some good work to make some teas much better, & have had a few that did not-- & I think that no one is likely to know which would do what w/o trying them for quite a while. My experience is very limited, but leads me to suggest that it is a gamble on any pot, & usually one makes on his own bets w/ his own $.
Unfortunately, when one loses, the $ is not just swept off a table & forgotten; rather, a pot sits there in one's view telling him that once again he was wrong.

[Tead Off]

As stated above + 1

Also the following HK-based vendor stocks old zhuni. Their prices reflect that...but are they at least 95% real according to your minimum requirement? I can't answer that. Maybe talk to the vendor and then see if you can make an informed decision, but I'm afraid it's still a high-risk kind of investment.

This is a Taiwanese vendor. Do you have any experience buying anything from them? Does anyone here have any experience with them?

[Tead Off]

Bruno, keep in mind that there are countless people looking for an older zhuni pot. It's not impossible to find, just difficult. It can take a very long time to find one but there is no rush, is there? Rushing is a sure way to make a mistake. You've already decided you want one, now you must do the work to locate one. Maybe someone here who wants to sell one from there collection will contact you. Or, when you come to Asia, you'll be specifically looking in shops, talking to the owners, drinking tea with other Asians, all the while looking and learning and then, voila, something appears for your consideration. Patience. No need to rush. This area is a minefield and they're waiting for you, believe me.

[brunogm]

Tead,

A regular poster in this forum already contacted me privately, so maybe I'll get lucky

Anyway, this idea of buying directly from Asia is interesting and I may end up considering my collection is not complete and buying a couple more pots in Asia.

In addition to Beijing and Kuala Lumpur, I think I can get pots from Nanchang. We had a Chinese trainee from Nanchang that we just hired fulltime now in Paris. I can ask her to buy me a pot when she goes visit her parents. What is good is that she knows about pots and teas, even though she has deviant theories like the teas from her native Jiangxi are just as good as the teas from Fujian.

[gasninja]

kaula Lumpurm sounds like your best bet for a zhuni but there not cheap.

You can check out http://www.skip4tea.com from KL
I have bought a pot from them and they look to have some real zhuni . But not everything labeled as zhuni I think Is Lao zhuni. I also have heard they have been hard to get ahold of recently. But it may be worth a shot.

[hopeofdawn]

Possibly slightly off-topic, but since I've seen them recommended elsewhere on Teachat--anyone have any experiences with Wisdom Tea, on Ebay? I'm really liking the look of a couple of their pots--obviously they're not antique or master-crafted, but I'm wondering more about the general craftsmanship and clay quality of their yixing offerings. Good? Bad? Should I be taking their descriptions with a very large grain of salt, or are they pretty accurate?

[bagua7]

This is a Taiwanese vendor.

Oops, you are right, totally missed the .tw. It should be .hk.

[tingjunkie]

Possibly slightly off-topic, but since I've seen them recommended elsewhere on Teachat--anyone have any experiences with Wisdom Tea, on Ebay? I'm really liking the look of a couple of their pots--obviously they're not antique or master-crafted, but I'm wondering more about the general craftsmanship and clay quality of their yixing offerings. Good? Bad? Should I be taking their descriptions with a very large grain of salt, or are they pretty accurate?

Do you mean Wisdom China? If so, I haven't bought any of their pots, but from the photos, some of the less expensive ones seem like a good deal for decent entry level pots given today's market. On par with Zen8's best offerings by the looks of it. I think I'd avoid anything there over $100 though. [now... off to go see if there is another store called Wisdom Tea. ]

[Easily_Diffused]

Can anyone tell me if this pot would be a good pot for for Wuyi oolong? I'm new to Yixing pots and am just looking to get a good starter pot. I've read a few guides on how to choose the right yixing pot, but I want to get your opinions before I buy something. Thanks in advance and here is the link to the pot : http://china-cha-dao.com/collections/zi ... -150ml-231

[tingjunkie]

Welcome to the forum ED. There is a mountain of info on the forum about pairing teapots with tea and which vendors are well-regarded, so I highly recommend taking some more time to research first before posting "what about this teapot" questions. The most important thing to remember is that teapot pairing simply can not be done from photos alone. The best we can do is make an educated guess.

The pot you posted above looks sketchy to me in terms of clay quality. The concentric rings on the inside lead me to believe it is not Yixing at all, or at best, it's slip cast Yixing with some hand finishing. If the concentric circles were smaller and more uniform, I'd think it was a hand thrown Taiwanese pot, which can be great if the quality is good, but they are not the same as Yixing. However it was made, the clay doesn't impress. More importantly though, I think 150 ml is way too big for Wuyi unless you're serving four or more people. The pots I use when making yancha for myself or two people are 60-70ml, but that's because my brewing style is straight kungfu (high leaf to volume ratio). For me, brewing 5g of yancha in a 150ml pot would make extremely boring tea.

The two characteristics you got right with that pot are the lower profile, and the wide opening to accommodate the larger yancha leaves. If my budget for a yancha pot was $35, I'd go with this pot. At 90ml, it's still a bit large for my tastes for solo brewing, but it has the right shape, and the clay and craftsmanship look decent enough. It's getting a lot harder to find decent entry level Yixing pots for that price though, especially pots 120ml or smaller, so keep that in mind for future searches. Personally, I'm at the point in my Yixing collecting where I try to only buy mid level (whatever that means) or higher pots, and I count myself lucky if I can find a good one online for less than $100.

Good luck on your search!

[tingjunkie]

Tingjunkie, I already have a modern zhuni teapot.

If you already have a modern zhu ni pot, and you claim that you are not a collector but a tea drinker, then why do you want a lao zhu ni pot? What will the difference be in how each one makes tea? How many lao zhu ni pots have you had experience with?

[dim_aa]

Sorry for hijacking this tread, I didn't want to start a new one with another purple teapot question May we should have an official yixing suggestion tread?
Anyway. I was looking for a small yixing pot for high fire oolong for solo brewing and have found one here in NYC that is about 80ml. It loos like zisha/zini clay and it is pretty cheap.
What do you think about it? Is it worth buying, considering that it is difficult to find a small pot?

[brunogm]

I am not a collector in the sense that I do not intend to buy more pots when my collection is finished. And it is almost finished. When it is finished, I will use my small collection to try to find good pairings. I already found a few good ones.

But I am a collector, in the sense that I have a small collection.
So the best description would be that I was a collector for 3 or 4 months, but I am soon no longer a collector.

I have zero experience with lao zhu ni. I want to buy a lao zhu ni pot because I want! "De gustibus et coloribus non disputandum".

Actually, since my original post, I decided that I wanted also a high fired hongni pot (mine is medium fired) and a purion pot (which I have already ordered). So I need two pots (hong ni and zhu ni) to finish collection.

Why do I buy so many pots even though I am a tea newb? Because I have a plan.

- test as many teas as possible (I am close to 180 teas tested by now)
- determine my favorite ones (I have found about 20 teas that I LOVE so far)
- pair each favorite tea if possible with a pot.

Tea testing and pot pairing is kind of a fun hobby for me, and a delicious one at that.

If you already have a modern zhu ni pot, and you claim that you are not a collector but a tea drinker, then why do you want a lao zhu ni pot? What will the difference be in how each one makes tea? How many lao zhu ni pots have you had experience with?