Handmade Sculptural Form Yixing Zisha Teapot – Jiangponi Clay, 130ml

This is a 130 ml sculptural form teapot in Jiangponi Clay, fully handmade, made in Dingshu, Yixing. Its Chinese name is 新竹.

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 bamboo — in Chinese decorative vocabulary, an upright, hollow-hearted humility. 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. 130 ml serves two to three people from a single fill, which makes it the most generally useful size on a tea table. Best suited to black tea, light oolong and ripe pu-erh.

This pot. Catalogue no. 285, 130 ml, US$750. 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 — Red Jiangponi Clay, 100 ml, $580
• Handmade Sculptural Form Yixing Zisha Teapot — Red Jiangponi Clay, 150 ml, $450
• Handmade Sculptural Form Yixing Zisha Teapot — Jiangponi Clay, 180 ml, $2000

Or browse every Jiangponi pot · the full Yixing catalogue.