Handmade Sculptural Form Yixing Zisha Teapot – Zhuni Clay, 150ml

This is a 150 ml sculptural form teapot in Zhuni Clay, fully handmade, made in Dingshu, Yixing. Its Chinese name is 梅桩.

The clay. Very high in iron, fired to a bright vermilion, and dense enough to ring when the lid is tapped. Zhuni shrinks by up to twenty percent in the kiln, so a large share of every batch cracks — the Yixing saying is that a zhuni pot without wrinkles is not zhuni. Dense and low-porosity, so it holds aroma at the surface instead of absorbing it. This is the clay that makes fragrant teas smell like themselves.

The form. The subject here is plum stump — in Chinese decorative vocabulary, flowering before anything else does. 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. 150 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 oolong, dancong and green tea.

This pot. Catalogue no. 293, 150 ml, US$620. 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

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• Handmade Sculptural Form Yixing Zisha Teapot — Aged Zini Clay, 140 ml, $550

Or browse every Zhuni pot · the full Yixing catalogue.