futurebird wrote:
People here don't care as much about antiques as they do about how well a pot will brews tea-- IMNSHO so the uh-- chilly reception these pots are getting is due to the fact that they are not desirable to people who drink tea. (especially gonfu) And age is hard to establish.
True black yixing clay is very rare. I think it's too rare to make a souvenir of this quality. What do other teachatters think? (Hei Tie Sha (黑铁砂) is also not this dark, it is brown highlights, a sand particles varied color another less rare clay Hei Ni Clay is more jet, but would also have particles. But perhaps this is the lighting? Did they even have black clay in the 50s? I have never seen a black pot before the 80s to be very very honest. (can someone prove me wrong?)
ah... i care a lot of about antiques actually.. it becomes addictive so i try to be rational and focus a little on the functionality sometimes. in due time i might be putting together a quarterly magazine on collectibles/antiques in partnership with some of the collector groups.
the common black yixing clay is an interesting issue so i thought i would trace it here a little.
1) 60s in F1, only 3 major clay distinctions, Zhu/red clay, Zi sha, Duanni. no funny sub categories. small amounts of green clay and dark brown clay was available, but mostly used for decorating pots i.e. San You hu/da song zhu mei/xiao song zhu mei.
2) In the 70s catalogue, 2/5 of the catalogue was tea/coffee/wine ware,
the other 3/5 was all flower pots.. so much so that the lovely 70s qingshui ni, huanglong shang original mine and all that.. are made into large flower pots.
3) towards end 70s appeared a classical black clay pot, the Black Apple (hei ping guo). the early generation was brownish black, with clear yellow grains, it seems that it was made on the base of 70s QSN, and that was called "hei tie sha", not because of its sandy appearance but probably the blend of black iron sand oxide with some manganese (maybe?)
4) why i mentioned the flower pot thing was because the best, deepest, and richest black of the 70s was only seen in flower pot, i.e. 8" si fang ping, and also the decorative rims and base of the 70s duanni vase with colored bird carvings/decorations. you do not see the sand grains in these blacks, the blackness is deep and homogenous, this is either original clay, or strong manganese doping (i think its manganese).
5) in the 80s it was a boom for dark clays, they also did not call it hei tie sha (not a term until its invention very much later), in F1 it was hei-pin, blending with black iron sand (black iron oxide) and some manganese dioxide. it gave good color consistency, easy to fire, so much so this material was supplied in bulk to F2, F5 etc in very large quantities. This is why you can pick up a nice 80s-end 80s F2/F5 pot in this material for cheap in south east asia. depending on the base material that was blended, if its 70s ores there will be yellow sandy specs, if its 80s pu-ni then it will smoother with less yellow specs, if it was made on the base of jiazi, the black will be nice and deep with lots of shimmery mica on the surface..
6) there are other ways to get black, reduction firing is one, and this was also seen end 80s to early 90s. they are a bit greyish black brown due to the reduction of red iron oxide to black iron oxide, and this color is quite intermediate, not as black as the manganese doped ones.
7) to make a point as well, in another thread i highlighted the term "weng ge lu" that was used to describe the clay of a pot made in the 90s... its actually supposed to be Wen Ge Lv, which is cultural revolution green. this green was seen mainly for exterior decorations during the CR, and the main pot from the 70s that was considered to be the "reference" for Wenge green is the Green 易新 pot. It was made in classical duanni or lv ni. the base of the Wenge Green is duan-ni like, so in the 90s, to recreate this color, duanni particles were blended.
I think the pot of the threadstarter resemble more of the black of nixing/qinzhou
.