We received many emails from customers who purchased Zi Sha teapots from us expressing their excitements about their orders. Unlike many other shops, we focus on functionality instead of fancy style of our teapots. Most of our teapots are in basic traditional styles. So what about those teapots that impressed our happy customers? It is their fine craftsmanship and high quality clay.
Seasoned tea drinkers and Zi Sha teapot collectors know that high quality clay is very important to the overall quality of a teapot. Other than the quality of raw clay, skill level of a craftsman also affects final teapot clay quality. How are the two associated?
As many of us may already know, Zi Sha teapot is a general name for all teapots that made of Zi Sha clay. Zi Sha clay can be further divided into Zi (purple) clay, Zhu (red) clay and Ben Shan Lu (green) clay. Zi Sha clay is a hard mineral. Mined Zi Sha clay will change into tiny soy bean size sands after being exposed to sun light and rain. After further processing, those sands turn into wet clay, or what known as raw clay. Raw clay will need to be aged before it can be used for making teapots. Well aged clay demands high prices.
The time that a craftsman starts to make a teapot from raw clay is when craftsmanship comes into play in the final quality of teapot clay. An experienced craftsman has good clay processing skills and is good at controlling firing temperature.
We will talk about how to judge Zi Sha teapot clay quality next time….
Tea Lovers at JinYuXuan Tea House
www.teahub.com
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