Yixing seal

[lep]

Hi guys, trying to read this seal, to try to know who's the maker, anyone there that can shine a light?

[honglam]

It says “荆溪徐製”. I guess it's a teapot. It means "made by 徐Xu from 荆溪(a obsolete name of 宜兴, a town of China)". It is hard to say who's the maker since this seal only mentioned his family name.

[lep]

ah, thanks for the quick reply, when you say an obsolete name of 宜兴, with that can you say it's before certain date?

[lep]

here it is

[honglam]

On 10/29/2024 at 8:02 PM, lep said:

with that can you say it's before certain date?

No. It's very common to use an ancient name to address a certain city in a Chinese context. There are times when artists do creations under the name of masters with great celebrity. 徐 is a common family name of Jiangsu province so it's actually hard to say who's the actually creator of this pot.

[Balthazar]

This is definitely a modern (and from the look of it not very special) pot. The seal is not likely to tell you much (as, alas, it rarely is)

[lep]

yeah, seems modern but I'm not looking for antique I'm looking for quality clay.. 🤔

I have a couple quality ones and trying to find the next one

[lep]

I don't to abuse of your time, but if someone can give me some info on this one:

 

 

+

 

 

[honglam]

It says “周桂珍Zhou Guizhen”. She seems to be a master on Zisha clay pot with great celebrity. I'm not a teapot collector so I'm not quite sure about that.

[lep]

probably a replica I think

thank you once again!

[Balthazar]

On 10/31/2024 at 1:05 PM, lep said:

yeah, seems modern but I'm not looking for antique I'm looking for quality clay.. 🤔

I have a couple quality ones and trying to find the next one

 

If quality clay is the only criteria, I would first ask what your budget is. You're unlikely to strike gold at thrift stores and even more so at Taobao etc.

 

It is perhaps counter-intuitive, but buying a vintage pot is often the most affordable way to get a pot with good clay (and by good I mean that it has a benefitial, or at least non-detrimental, effect on the tea).

 

Typically the green label pots (1978-82) of Factory 1 strike a great balance between (relative) affordability and clay quality. Unfortunately it is not always trivial to identify the fakes (I'd steer clear of Ebay) and trustworthy vendors such as moodyguy charge a premium. But the sales section of e.g. teaforum.org can be a great place to pick one up for a reasonable price

 

For modern stuff... Really the market is just flooded with low-quality additive laden (but sometimes amazing looking) pots. Always avoid the ornamental stuff. Personally I'd recommend buying from someone like Teas We Like, Essence of Tea or RealZiSha.

[lep]

ye..

this teapot is from a respected dealer here in Portugal, he garantees me it's pre 2000, mid 90's. As far as I see, it might be from the artisan that is mentioned in the seal mark, also saw other pieces of her with same seal.

🤔

I shall proceed with my researches

thank you all for your kind replies and time!

[Balthazar]

If anything that's probably one of the more sketchy periods in Yixing production. End days of state factory era and relative control of clay supplied to market, high market demand for pots (from overseas Chinese consumers mostly, Taiwan in particular). Lots of shady stuff produced.

 

My personal preferences would be for pots produced either before early 90s (and then F1 pots, there are some decent F2 ones too but they're generally much more variable in clay quality) or after 2010, generally speaking. (Of course I'd sell an arm or maybe both for some well-fired pre- or early factory era pots too, but they're outside tha range of what my arms would fetch, heh.)

 

But of course the most important thing is that you find something that checks your personal boxes, be that a particular aesthetic quality, clay quality or something else. I won't blame you for trusting the local expert, though there are plenty of those that have proven to be less than deserving of the expert title. I am also by no means an expert myself, just a guy with a few too many teapots. Good luck!

[lep]

Many thanks for your insights! I need to know more about the production of yixing pottery, if you have any useful links... 

Thanks once again!

[Balthazar]

On 11/1/2024 at 11:48 PM, lep said:

I need to know more about the production of yixing pottery, if you have any useful links... 

 

Depends a bit on what part of the production you're interested in. For something relatively accessible and in English, perhaps have a look at the September 2017 issue of the Global Tea Hut magazine. I will add the caveat that GTH is a fairly "new age" operation and also that there are probably some errors in there, but they deserve some commendation for the amount of information they have made freely available in English imo.

 

There is also the classical and very opinionated 1998 article (part 1, part 2) from Singaporean collector "Billy Mood", known to contain some factual errors, but still worth a read.

 

The best work on factory era pots is probably Dr. 呂麒麟's book 早期壺事典「貳」/ Early tea pots II. Unfortunately only available in Chinese, though an English translation has been in the works for a long time (starting to wonder if it will ever see the light of day). The guy working on the translation has written a useful article on "secrets of choosing Yixing teapots".

 

You may also find this blog a worthwhile read, particularly the articles "The Traditional Yixing Zisha Processing Method" and "The Modern Yixing Zisha Processing Method".