Handmade Pumpkin Form Yixing Zisha Teapot – Jiangponi Clay, 75ml

This is a 75 ml sculptural form teapot in Jiangponi Clay, fully handmade, made in Dingshu, Yixing. Its Chinese name is 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. At 75 ml this is a solo pot. One person, short infusions, and the small volume means you can push a good leaf through eight or ten steeps without ever brewing more than you drink. Best suited to black tea, light oolong and ripe pu-erh.

This pot. Catalogue no. 280, 75 ml, US$350. 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 Pumpkin Form Yixing Zisha Teapot — Jiangponi Clay, 160 ml, $450
• Handmade Sculptural Form Yixing Zisha Teapot — Jiangponi Clay, 150 ml, $550
• Handmade Sculptural Form Yixing Zisha Teapot — Jiangponi Clay, 180 ml, $450

Or browse every Jiangponi pot · the full Yixing catalogue.