Handmade Sculptural Form Yixing Zisha Teapot – Jiangponi Clay, 208ml

This is a 208 ml sculptural form teapot in Jiangponi Clay, fully handmade, made in Dingshu, Yixing. Its Chinese name is 景乐南瓜.

The clay. Mined from the slope between Huanglong and Qinglong mountains, where red and yellow ores meet — so the fired body carries both, warm and softly mottled. Fine-grained with a gentle sand feel. It polishes to an oily lustre faster than most clays and brews sweet and round.

The form. The subject here is pumpkin — in Chinese decorative vocabulary, abundance and a full harvest. Naturalistic work — huaqi — takes its subject from the living world: gourds, pine, bamboo, lotus, fruit, animals. It descends directly from Gongchun's tree-burl pot, the founding object of the craft. Each piece is modelled and carved rather than turned, so no two come out the same.

How it was made. Built entirely by hand — the wall is beaten out from a slab and joined without a mould. Inside the body you can still read the tool marks and the joint line, which is how the method is verified.

Size and tea. 208 ml is a sharing pot. It suits a table of four or more, or a long single steep of something you want to drink slowly over an afternoon. Best suited to black tea, light oolong and ripe pu-erh.

This pot. Catalogue no. 276, 208 ml, US$450. Photographed individually — the images show the pot you receive.

Made by an independent Dingshu potter working outside the titled-master system. We do not attach a name we cannot verify.

New to zisha? Read how to season a Yixing teapot before first use.

Similar teapots

• Handmade Sculptural Form Yixing Zisha Teapot — Jiangponi Clay, 130 ml, $750
• Handmade Sculptural Form Yixing Zisha Teapot — Red Jiangponi Clay, 135 ml, $500
• Handmade Artisan Design Yixing Zisha Teapot — Jiangponi Clay, 180 ml, $400

Or browse every Jiangponi pot · the full Yixing catalogue.