Why is Yixing the best clay?

[yee]

I beg your pardon, but yee is making sense.

I beg your pardon, but Yee and Mornimer share IP's. Is this 2 ... or 3 members?

How is this a problem? I dont even want to soy that he is my nephew?

[xuancheng]

Oxidation and fermentation are 2 completely different things. They are not interchangeable. Even some sellers of tea wrongly describe some teas as being fermented like oolongs. Puerh is a fermented tea. It is a process of purposely introducing bacteria into the tea to change its structure.

When I said they were used interchangebly in both English and Chinese, I was just making a note of common practice. I always try to be precise when I talk about it, but I have met a lot of people who always say fermented no matter which one they mean. When you talk about pu'er tea, this can get confusing, especially as some factories in recent years have done experiments with light oxidization in pu'er in addition to the traditional fermentation it can become quite confusing to talk to someone who does not for whatever reason differentiate between the two terms.

Do they ferment yixing clay? Or, do they soak and sieve repeatedly?

Yixing clay ore is usually left outside to weather or age for a couple of years before it is used. Oxidization takes place during the weathering process. This generally happens before the processing steps you mentioned.

[scruffmcgruff]

Actually, since it came up, even the term "oxidation" isn't completely accurate as a lot of the stuff going on is driven by enzymatic reactions, not pure oxidation. Just picking nits!

[chrl42]

Yixing Yixing..

For anyone who wants to see anything, here's some basic facts of Yixing clay.

Yixing clay's oxide iron contains about 7.44%~8.60%, is clay, quartz, mica, mixed ore, fired at 1100C~1200C (oxidation environment).

Yixing clay's charactetertic is: artistic crafting not easily changed (shaping): absoptiveness about 2%, in-and-out not glazed: endurable against radical temperatere change: forms its special double porosity.

Yixing clay (Zini for example), liquid limit about 33.4%, plastic limit 15.9%, plasticity overall high..blah blah


City of Yixing has been called City of literary men, traditionally famous for its writer, poets, painters (as well as other River-South areas), is total art of pottery, painting, poem, traditional art.

First Yixing teapot might just had been imitation (very first pot was made by Gongchun crafted with a spoon), coming to late-Ming, undergone by talented potter such as Shi Da Bin, Hui Meng Chen etc, loved and made by literay men such as Chen Man Sheng, got its attention directly from Royal and made pots for them. It's a unique Chinese tradition born when Ming emperor tabooed 'boiling tea' and ordered 'brewing tea'..


Is Yixing overrated or underrated? My opinion, it's both. It's overrated when 'selling' is involved, it's underrated cos Yixing market is a chaos, high-quality clays are running out, what 'Yixing clay' are you talking about?

Is it Qing Shui ni? is it Di Cao Qing? is it Huanglong's or Hufu's? how long was it stored? what mixing had been done? what chemical oxide contained? what temperature given? what type of tea are you brewing? without knowing them, how do you say good or bad, A to Z?

On clay and craftsmanship, it always happens. There are collectors who weigh more on craftsmanship, there are who weigh more on clay, but I've seen the gravity more on the clay and is a trend, and in future more likely so..

I am sure there are better clay than Yixing's, but how long will it take for 'infra' to settle and how many people in this world drink tea, so what are the chances in our lifetime..plus I've seen no Chinese claiming Yixing clay is 'best' clay in the world..maybe in China? but this as well not sure...
so unless we move Yixing potters out of Yixing and give money to make pots of new generation, there gonna be no problem...

[Aphroditea]

Thanks Chrl42 for your great post! I seems to me that folks are leaning toward the quality of the pots being a product of the craftsmen. Bearsbearsbears and I were discussing the idea of using similar clays to produce similar pots and see what the result is. It would be nice to have someone trained in the Yixing tradition, but as the Teaware Artisans forum has shown there is at least a small portion of potters who are also tea drinkers (some tea enthusiasts), so I should think that some experimentation COULD be done if there was enough interest in such an undertaking. Personally, I am very curious to see what the results would be.

I have a Yixing and plan on getting another quite soon. I also visit tearooms which have them (one tearoom has very cheap yixing and the other has both Chinese yixings and the Taiwanese variety). I do like the pots and the way the qualities of the pots interact with the qualities of the teas. Just for the record