Handmade Sculptural Form Yixing Zisha Teapot – Zini Clay, 220ml

This is a 220 ml sculptural form teapot in Zini Clay, fully handmade, made in Dingshu, Yixing. Its Chinese name is 梅桩.

The clay. Zini is the foundational Yixing clay — purple-brown, mined at Huanglong Mountain, and the most forgiving of all the ores. It is highly plastic, notably porous, and develops a patina faster than most clays. Even-tempered and genuinely versatile. It rounds out a brew rather than sharpening it, which makes it a safe first pot for someone who drinks several kinds of tea.

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. 220 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 pu-erh, black tea and aged oolong.

This pot. Catalogue no. 367, 220 ml, US$700. 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 — Qing Duanni Clay, 175 ml, $740
• Handmade Sculptural Form Yixing Zisha Teapot — Aged Zini Clay, 160 ml, $1500
• Handmade Sculptural Form Yixing Zisha Teapot — Zini Clay, 150 ml, $450

Or browse every Zini pot · the full Yixing catalogue.