Heini...Another Quest

[Tead Off]

For me, it looks like a nicely made pot and the clay doesn't look like it is colored. Is it the real thing? Will anyone bet their life on it? Their child?

[needaTEAcher]

That is a gorgeous pot, in my humble opinion. Can I have it?

[Drax]

Aside from the personal jabbing going on, I have really enjoyed this discussion -- it appeals to both my scientific side and to my romantic (or spiritual, perhaps) side.

My scientific side wants to know all the details about clays, their interactions with tea and me, and all that great stuff; but at the same time, I am daunted by the sheer number of variables on all sides (as already discussed), and worse, by my lack of ability to adequately quantitate any of it (compounded further by living in Nowhere, USA).

And yet, in spite of the utter chaos, now the romantic side of me swells with hope! I imagine out there, somewhere, a "soul teapot" -- one with just the right clay composition that it can perfectly align a tea with my nature to achieve some sort of nirvanic bliss.

All very fanciful, but it makes me smile, and I enjoy my tea journey even more. I have so few venues to explore in person, so I am greatly appreciative of the discussions and exposure you are all able to share!

And by the way -- needaTEAcher, you might check out this link to Hojo on mumyoi clay; it's a red clay that can be fired black (reduction firing). Hojo tends to be a source of controversy, but all that aside, I thought the information on the clay itself was interesting (and relevant to the black hei ni question at hand. See also this part where he talks about different ways of getting black... the reduction previously mentioned but also naturally black clays that have manganese -- no sources cited, but..............)

[yanom]

I think it's useful to bear in mind that yixing teapots come from a country where describing and classifying and listing rules about great big lumps of stone has been seen as a valuable and important scholarly and aesthetic exercise for hundreds of years!

[bagua7]

If your goal is to make better tea, as it seems to be the case, I'd suggest that you should worry more about the teas you're drinking than the kind of clay that your pots are made of.

Chip, close this thread, please.

Jokes aside, being obsessed about Yixing pottery is a very costly game, and not worth IMO. To give you an example, I just had water collected from a small waterfall located in a mountain just a couple of hours away from where I live, which also happens to be one of Earth's power spots and a significant Aboriginal Australian sacred site; and let me tell you forget about filtered water, bottled water, and so forth. The tea brewed using that water is just mind-blowing. No Yixing pot would brew tea like using pristine and energetically charged water flowing directly from the Earth. And the best thing of all: it is free (well, just include the cost of the fuel for driving to that place).

[TIM]

Modern Black clay and sand. Which one is Which?

[sriracha]

Modern Black clay and sand. Which one is Which?

No idea, but beautiful pots in any case. =)

[needaTEAcher]

I think it's useful to bear in mind that yixing teapots come from a country where describing and classifying and listing rules about great big lumps of stone has been seen as a valuable and important scholarly and aesthetic exercise for hundreds of years!

Mwahahaha. And perhaps this is part of why we have so much fun trying to understand it.

So I checked with my two teachers about the whole clay vs sand thing, and we had some confusion!

First, I asked a woman who reverts to Korean when the answer to a question is complicated, so she gave me a long and descriptive answer, but I couldn't tell you what it means! She drew a bunch of pictures, something to do with where the ocean used to be and mountains, but I didn't get it... Thought this bit was worth sharing in case someone can chime in and put any of these pieces into the puzzle.

Then I talked to the big boss, and his answer was interesting. He said he isn't familiar with the English uses of the word, but his best guess was that, ultimately, it is a translation error of some sort. He said clay (or "mud" comes from the rocks that get pulverized and mixed with water, other minerals, other rocks, etc., but that sand doesn't mix with water, so you can't use actual purple sand to make pottery. He said that Yixing folks refer to purple soil, but that it isn't used for pottery. He said that the word "zisha" is used to describe the whole range of purple pottery, but he figured that this isn't the issue here, since everyone knows that meaning. Then he said that there is a distinction to be drawn between clay that is made as described above, and naturally occurring clay, i.e. mud that is found/dug up that can be used with much less (no?) processing. I don't know much about the processing of the clay, so it is hard to extrapolate meaning, and I didn't want to press the point because he is busy and we had some other things to talk about.

Chatting with the lower-lever master, and he didn't know (he doesn't speak Chinese, and in Korean they don't make whatever this distinction is), but he had some interesting thoughts on heini. He said that it is largely rare because there isn't much of the clay left (his company's factory only has 2 tons left, which they are saving), but that it usually is cheaper than other "extinct" clays because the Chinese market doesn't go for the black color, since black is evil/death and whatnot. Interesting!

Also, I played with a really pretty zini pot that was double fired, and at a much higher temperature the 2nd fire, so it looked black, but with some gorgeous red tones throughout it. Zini clay, but looked black. I had heard about the technique, but never touched a pot like it. Simply stunning, though I'd imagine it looses some porosity with the high fire...

Sorry for the long ramble, but I wanted to share the experience. Any thoughts y'all?

[needaTEAcher]

Oh, and I had an idea. Is it possible that "black sand" is actually black mud, but that has the sand/soil material mixed in? In which case, Tim, would it be the one closer to the camera that is the sand one, since it has some sparkle to it, perhaps the grains of "sand"?

[Tead Off]

Oh, and I had an idea. Is it possible that "black sand" is actually black mud, but that has the sand/soil material mixed in? In which case, Tim, would it be the one closer to the camera that is the sand one, since it has some sparkle to it, perhaps the grains of "sand"?

If you are so interested in Yixing pottery and clays, why not go to Yixing and spend some time there talking to some potters and tea people. If you are one or two steps removed from the source, can you get reliable information from people not intimately involved with the clays? You must know by now after living in Asia for awhile, that information is not always factual. People have a habit of repeating things they've heard and have no way to know if it's true or not. Talk to the potters, the people who work and use the clay, who have a vital interest in the subject. Make sense?

[needaTEAcher]

It does! Actually, I am working on something that, if it works, will put me in a factory for 6 months in Yixing, doing international communication work for the Korean company I like (English is the medium between the Korean and the Chinese, which is AWESOME for me!). If that doesn't work, the other option is their Kunming factory, which would also be amazing, and if that falls through than I am hoping to work for the head office in Korea, and I will just tour China as a tourist.

Ultimately, I am planning on going to China in 2013 one way or another, but I am pretty intimidated by what I have heard about how deceitful the tea industry is, and how rough some of the tea folks can be, so I have been trying to learn as much as I can before we go (I am not so nieve-I want to be confident in my ability to sort through the crap to find the real deals). Also, I plan on buying pots and tea there, so I figured it would be best for China to be the last stop before we come home, so that I don't have to store all that stuff with other people/I have more knowledge an experience for my purchases! Make sense? Can't wait to go! Probably in January or February...

[fdrx]

Modern Black clay and sand. Which one is Which?

the one closer to the camera has some red, i would say i'ts black clay after reading marshaln's comment. The other one looks darker and less smooth like on Tim's first picture, so it's maybe black sand.

[TIM]

Oh, and I had an idea. Is it possible that "black sand" is actually black mud, but that has the sand/soil material mixed in? In which case, Tim, would it be the one closer to the camera that is the sand one, since it has some sparkle to it, perhaps the grains of "sand"?

Needateacher-looking back 43 posts. Do you still consider your first group of 3 yixings pictures in your first post heini?

[tingjunkie]

Tim, you have to use your heisha(?) pots the next time I drop by. I've yet to have one single positive experience with black clay, but I'm sure it's because I've still yet to try the real thing. Is it worth a damn for tea making, or is it a far cry from a decent zisha pot?

[TIM]

Tim, you have to use your heisha(?) pots the next time I drop by. I've yet to have one single positive experience with black clay, but I'm sure it's because I've still yet to try the real thing. Is it worth a damn for tea making, or is it a far cry from a decent zisha pot?

Like Mr. M said, forget about heini. Not worth chasing dragons.... Concentrate on the purple sand - Zisha.