Gorgeous Tea Canister

[Herb_Master]

I find this clay tea canister incredibly attractive!

I would love to own 1 (or more)

Then I noticed the price

Is the canister itself responsible for the price?

Or is the Pu-Erh inside pushing the price sky high?

$499

http://cgi.ebay.com/Yixing-Treasures-Zi ... 634.c0.m14

[puerhking]

Clearly the reason this is worth the price is the aged puerh that comes with it.

Strange that they didn't even include a picture of the markings on the bottom of the pot and or the lid. Oh well no bother. Im sure that is very tasty tea.





.....note to self.......never buy from Yunnan Colorful.

[brad4419]

Beautiful canister but for me I would rather have $499 worth of tea.

I would say the canister is most of the reason for the high price because of the statement below, though the tea sounds great, mmm 18yr old pu.

"Why is it so rare? As for the production of Yixing clay is High quality mineral zhuni clay from Original Mine, the famous purple sand from the division-wide process handmade, and requested the Chinese Yixing well-known calligrapher inscribed with a beautiful landscape design! Produced spent 3 months time."

[Drax]

I'm not familiar with loose pu-erh tea, so I have no clue.

800mL is pretty huge, though (27 fluid oz).

But something tells me that 200g of tea (7oz) does not fill that pot. Well, to be fair, the text doesn't say it's filled to the top even if one of the pictures implies it.

Maybe you can see how much they'd sell the pot w/o the tea?

[JRS22]

I'm not an expert potter, but after looking closely at the two pieces, I think they're decorated with two very different techniques.

The first one appears to be carved. That's really time consuming and it's difficult (sometimes impossible) to correct mistakes.

The second, less expensive one, looks to me as if it could have been made by applying the calligraphy with wax prior to glazing. Not only is that much faster, but you can wash off the wax if you make a mistake.

I'm not sure that explains the whole difference in prices, but it should explain some of it.

[vibrantdragon]

The quality of the Yixing is also very important. If they used high quality clay that has had the heavy metals removed it cost a lot more than the cheaper Yixing with the heavy metals. When buying Yixing you should ask about the quaility of the clay used to make it. You can hope that the higher cost better quality ones have had the heavy metals removed.

[tony shlongini]

When buying Yixing you should ask about the quaility of the clay used to make it.

And I'm sure that you'll receive an answer that is forthright, sincere, honest, and, above all, accurate.

In fact, my last yixing pot was commisioned by the emperor himself, and was smuggled out of the forbidden city by traitors who were eventually executed.


When my daughter calls them my "pots made out of magic dirt", she's not far off the mark.

When has any business ever provided a proper answer to such a question? How's the veal? It stinks!

[vibrantdragon]

If you have access to a TXRF (Total x-ray reflection) tool you can check for the presence of heavy metals. Many customs officials and labs have this hand guns shaped tool that can see Mercury or others heavy metals. That way you do not have to believe anyone, but of course the gun has to be calibrate for clay as the matrix for the metals and that is always a guess at best. Most of these guns are calibrated for solder and circuit boards.

Back to the point of this thread. There are reasons that Yixing has very different price points and the quality of the clay is one of them. My wife did a tour of some of the Yixing operations with a small group of Chinese officials and they inspected the clay operations of some of the companies and watched them clean the clay used to make the pots. They explained that the clean clay (cleaning the heavy metals) was only used in the better pots from the better companies.

[ABx]

Chrl42 would be the one to ask, but I'm guessing that this is, or is at least supposed to be, original Yixing clay, which is very rare indeed.

If the puerh is indeed cooked (aka "ripe") as the listing suggests, then I wouldn't expect it to cost all that much. The last time I saw a 1991 aged loose shu it was somewhere around $120-$140/lb, but looked like better quality than what's pictured.

But something tells me that 200g of tea (7oz) does not fill that pot. Well, to be fair, the text doesn't say it's filled to the top even if one of the pictures implies it.

Why not? Grab one of your 30ml tasting cups and compare the inside volume to an ounce of loose leaf that's as voluminous as the one pictured and a 24oz soda bottle or cup; it should make sense pretty readily. A hundred grams of an old style rolled wulong (which looks about the same volume as that tea) can fill a 3.25" x 4.375" cylindrical tin (the Tao of Tea tins), which is just a hair over 20 fl oz in capacity. Of course the same tin can hold well over 10oz of a tightly rolled tea.

[Drax]

Chrl42 would be the one to ask, but I'm guessing that this is, or is at least supposed to be, original Yixing clay, which is very rare indeed.

If the puerh is indeed cooked (aka "ripe") as the listing suggests, then I wouldn't expect it to cost all that much. The last time I saw a 1991 aged loose shu it was somewhere around $120-$140/lb, but looked like better quality than what's pictured.

But something tells me that 200g of tea (7oz) does not fill that pot. Well, to be fair, the text doesn't say it's filled to the top even if one of the pictures implies it.

Why not? Grab one of your 30ml tasting cups and compare the inside volume to an ounce of loose leaf that's as voluminous as the one pictured and a 24oz soda bottle or cup; it should make sense pretty readily. A hundred grams of an old style rolled wulong (which looks about the same volume as that tea) can fill a 3.25" x 4.375" cylindrical tin (the Tao of Tea tins), which is just a hair over 20 fl oz in capacity. Of course the same tin can hold well over 10oz of a tightly rolled tea.

It was a stupid argument on my part to begin with. Since tea for brewing is usually (usually) measured by weight, the volume technically (technically) shouldn't matter.

Meanwhile on the "original clay" topic -- I would be interested to hear if there's actually any good way to know. Something tells me you'd have to see the pot in person...