List of potters

[isaac]

Hi,

Does anyone knows where an official list of yixing potters and their classifications can be obtained? I searched in various forums including this, but could not find any. There is one at "Billy Mood's Yixing" but i believe that list is not comprehensive and may be dated.

I was told it can be found at bcj.gov.cn but could not find it.

Thanks

[chrl42]

Sure, there is

Actually there is a better one

go to www.yxzst.com and type potter's name in simplified Chinese, the website is run by the city of Yixing

[isaac]

Thanks Charles. I typed and it return a search result comprising of special characters. But thanks anyway - i will try on another pc tomorrow.

[Herb_Master]

Thanks Charles. I typed and it return a search result comprising of special characters. But thanks anyway - i will try on another pc tomorrow.

I switched on my Google Toolbar, set Google to always translate Chinese and many pages translate reasonably well

[isaac]

Thanks. The IE translate the chinese characters quite well. However the special characters were found in the searched table. To resolve that I right click and choose encoding 'chinese simplified'. It worked.

[Herb_Master]

I have (30) pots by 10 potters which I bought from an ebay site 3 years ago. All with glossy studio certificates.

I have spent 3 hours on the site listed by chrl going through the 11+ pages of the star potters, and have so far only encountered one of them

Zhou Ting
http://pub.yxzst.com/star/zszx-n.asp?name=周婷
translated by google

Assistant craft artist Zhou Ting
Hostess Zhou Tao Fang Ting, born in 1967, 1984, the mother's Lu disk cents (to satisfying his disciples) learn pot art, has the mother's to Gaochun purple plant, Shou County, Anhui purple plant, purple plant in Guiyang any technical guidance. Yixing in 1988 into the Plant Research Institute. Yin Xiangming collaboration with her husband in 1990 to discuss purple plastic art, works in the flower known goods, inheritance, Zhu garde, more comprehensive in technology, basic skills more solid, based on the concept of modern art into the traditional process and into the pursuit of natural plain and simple charm of pleasure ceramic works have been in the national competitions, winning numerous awards. Biography included in the "Masters of Contemporary Yixing Ceramic Collection", "Tao Soul", "century well-known potters," and other large book works are History Museum collection.

I did however come across our old friend from the artisans pages
Cheng Jianming
http://pub.yxzst.com/star/zszx-n.asp?name=程建明

The ones I could not find

Ren Jiang En / Jiang Jian Ping
Chen Fa Sheng
Wang Xiao Fei
Fan Li Hua
Wu Ai Kun
Chen Guo Sheng
Zhou Jian Fang
Wang Qing Yuan
Chen Li Hua
Chen Yuan Ming
Yang Zhao Lan


Gao Jian Jun

My only recourse not understanding any chinese characters was to click at random and wait for google translator, the only success I had was when I clicked on the <more> by the list of star photos and waded through 12 pages of numerous names.

I tried babel translating my names to simplified chinese, pasting into search boxes - but always got zero results - is there a better way?

[isaac]

i am positive that there will be better ways of searching but i can share a relevant method. The certificates you had would have contained the names of the potters in chinese.

Do a google for chinese-english dictionary. Type in the pinyin name and look for the chinese equivalent. Match it against your certificate. After 3 rounds you will have the name of a potter in full.

Cut and paste it on the website that Charles gave. Click the search button.

[isaac]

Another way is once you have the full name, you append zisha in mandarin to the name (one word). Add a space. Append taobao. Do a google search.

You may come across a searched result. At taobao you will see an identification of the potter's qualification.


Yet a third way is to search for Billy Mood and on his webpage there is an outdated list of potters.

[Herb_Master]

mmmn

The names I gave above ? is that pinyin ?
I typed into babelcarp translator (my PC does not support chinese characters) the result showed unprintable characters

I copied the unprintable characters and pasted into what I think is the search box and pressed what I hope is the search button

It worked with Zhou Ting which I had already found the laborious way, but failed on a couple of others, and babel carp failed to translate all the words on several of the others that I tried

[chrl42]

That website is a geniune, the only official one for googling from I know of

BTW, on the artisan level issue (though there's many bribery)

There are appx 4~500 potters officially recorded (correct me)

国家级工艺美术大师 (grand master, appx. 10 people, price around over 10 grand)
高级工艺美术师 (high-level master, some 50, over 5 grand)
工艺美术师 (crafts-and-arts master, some 100, around 1000)
助力工艺美术师 (assisant-master, some 200)
工艺美术员 (crafts-and-arts member, some 300)

However, these levels aren't equivalent to skills, levels can be purchased with money and many, many masters don't even make pots

So in the end, personal understanding and reliable vendors are more useful..

[isaac]

Thanks for putting a context to the listing, Charles.

I heard several gossips regarding a potter - that her fame was due to her father, she does not know how to make pots, the cost is due to marketing efforts, those in the know will not collect her pots, etc. I do not know how much is truth, how much is competitors' envy. I also heard that a number of yixing expert potters are very shrewd and business-minded, focused on using marketing techniques to increase their selling price. They sold a teapot for $1 and tell other dealers it was sold for $1000 so that their prices will increase. Others put their stamp on teapots made by their apprentices and pass it off as their own. These are just starters for the genuine market.

The collection market is not for the unwary and certainly like you said, "so in the end, personal understanding and reliable vendors are more useful.." For the unwary, the tuition money can be substantial.

[isaac]

my PC does not support chinese characters

Try installing multi-language support for your PC/IE. I am not too literate in this matter but i think it comes with your disk. A google might work. There are many helpful people around.

The way i suggested is quite laborious but it works and i used the chinese names to view the works of these artisans.

Yes, the names are pinyin and if you type the pinyin name into the chinese-english dictionary you will obtain the chinese characters.

[chrl42]

Thanks for putting a context to the listing, Charles.

I heard several gossips regarding a potter - that her fame was due to her father, she does not know how to make pots, the cost is due to marketing efforts, those in the know will not collect her pots, etc. I do not know how much is truth, how much is competitors' envy. I also heard that a number of yixing expert potters are very shrewd and business-minded, focused on using marketing techniques to increase their selling price. They sold a teapot for $1 and tell other dealers it was sold for $1000 so that their prices will increase. Others put their stamp on teapots made by their apprentices and pass it off as their own. These are just starters for the genuine market.

The collection market is not for the unwary and certainly like you said, "so in the end, personal understanding and reliable vendors are more useful.." For the unwary, the tuition money can be substantial.

It really is a problem..even many grand masters use substantant potter (Dai Gong) so often. I know few potters who themselves are Dai Gong for high-level master, sometimes their pots go to market with their masters' stamp and their own stamp, price differs by over 10 times

Bribery, money and losing artisanship isn't problem in Yixing solely, it's a problem of modern day China..so we are missing Factory-1 days when these hunderd-thousand dollars' potters worked at factory 24/7, Gu Jing Zhou was known for having bruised hands making pot..

But collector market hasn't died yet, as there always is a backlash, there are also people who get to know about dark side and want to discuss about making pot, there are Xu Jin Gen, Shao Chun Liang, Tang Bin Jie, Gao Xu Feng etc..people who are not enrolled on the potters' list, yet their stuffs are treated as high-level master's..it's China..jungle

[isaac]

Charles, the thing is that it reached a stage where we do not know who we can trust and that it is better to be careful than to be an innocent abroad.

That is one reason i find online purchases direct from China very risky. The vendor can be the most honest person in the world but the purchase still need to be delivered. The delivery company can be ethical.

But who can guarantee that the delivery man is ethical?



The concept is the same - the airline is honest, the airport is honest and yet there are cases where checked-in baggage have valuable items stolen. (This can happen in any airport - the dependency is the integrity of the employee).

Most reputatable online vendors state that all they do is to ensure the item leave their premises in the state that was promised on the web. The other things are left unsaid.

China needs to get their act together. However pigs might fly. There are so many talented people in China. There are also many unscrupulous people in China who will not hesitate to mix substances detrimental to health into the teapot just so they can make money.

[isaac]

Hi Charles,

Can you please help to clear one puzzling fact:

I saw a certificate of this potter which state that the potter is 高级工艺美术师, commencement year 2007. However at the website you gave, it lists as 助理工艺美术师, commencement year 2007.

Even more amazing is another potter listed as 高级 but your website does not return a successful search. I double-checked the name on the professed certificate.

Is there a logical reason to these besides fraud? Perhaps a matter of updating? Both certificates were issued on 2007.

Thanks