Yixing ware

Forms, use and context#

Traditional pots are built by hand from beaten clay slabs rather than thrown. The making craft was in the first batch of China's national intangible heritage list (2006), and Yixing's ancient kiln sites became a nationally protected site the same year.

Examples in the catalogues

Three square-bodied pots recall an ancient vessel called a hu. The Hong Kong catalogue dates two to the eighteenth century. One shows brown clay (C81.363), the other a mottled blue-green glaze (C81.326). The Palace Museum dates its example to the Jiaqing reign and describes a zisha body beneath the glaze. It records an incised inscription on the base whose characters are obscured by glaze.

The Art of the Yixing Potter (1990) · no. 32–33 · p. 148–149 / 你应该知道的200件宜兴紫砂 (2007) · no. 191 · p. 284

On a cylindrical pot with eight lobes, openings in the outer wall form bamboo motifs. The catalogue records no mark and dates the pot to the first half of the eighteenth century.

The Art of the Yixing Potter (1990) · no. 28 · p. 145

A Yixing vessel can have a metal exterior. Gu Yue illustrates a pot clad in pewter. In the Hong Kong catalogue, a pot shaped like a stone stele carries inscriptions on its pewter casing (C81.419); a dated inscription corresponds to 1829. A separate entry shows three pewter-covered cups with angular handles, C81.516 (4–6). (古月《紫砂壶图谱》 (2011) · p. 45 (PDF 54) · 宜興紫砂陶器 / Yixing Purple Clay Wares (1994) · no. 43, p. 88 (PDF 94) · no. 55, p. 100 (PDF 106))

Body#

Zisha is the collective name for Yixing's purple clay (zini), red clay (hongni, including zhuni), green clay (benshan lüni, mainly for decoration) and blended duanni. Mined mainly at Huanglongshan, now under government control.⁴⁶¹

• Raw materials from Huanglongshan, Zhangzhu and Guangde (Anhui) are high in Al2O3 and Fe2O3; quartz 24–36 wt%, kaolinite 27–31 wt%, mica-type minerals 23–37 wt%. The material can be fired on its own without additions, and keeps a double-pore structure after firing.⁵

Methods#

1. Forming Mainly slab building: clay is beaten into sheets with a wooden mallet, then the body is beaten and joined (打泥片、拍打身筒、镶接身筒), surfaces finished, and often carved (陶刻).¹⁴
2. Clay preparation The prepared clay can be left to mature before forming.⁴
3. Firing About 1150–1200 °C over roughly 24 hours (Yingge museum); English Wikipedia gives 1100–1200 °C in an oxidising atmosphere. Shrinkage is 12–25 %, about 25 % for zhuni.⁴⁶
4. Industrial forming English Wikipedia notes that coiling, slip casting and throwing are also used today; it calls slip casting the most common, which differs from the handmade methods described by the heritage record.⁶
5. Firing (Ming) Zhou Gaoqi says that from the time of Li Maolin pots were fired inside their own closed clay containers (saggars); before that, famous pots could pick up drips of glaze from the jars fired with them. He also says pots were sealed several to a jar, and that over- and under-firing both spoil a pot.⁷
6. Clay preparation (Ming) Zhou Gaoqi says potters sieved and pounded coloured clays and stored them in a pit outside the workshop, called 'nurturing the clay' (養土), and that each family kept its own blending methods secret.⁷

In one round pot documented in 1994, the potter wraps a strip of clay around a disc, trims and compresses the join, then paddles the wall while supporting it from inside. The work turns on a stand as the curve takes shape. (1994, pp. 60–66 · 2017, pp. 102–103)

The spout begins as a separate piece of clay. In this round-pot exercise, the potter pierces the centre of a soft roll, tapers the hollow tube and bends it to shape. After finding its position on the body, the potter opens an outlet through the wall and attaches the spout over it.^{pp. 75–78, figs. 29–36}

Typical objects#

XishiShipiaoFangguDuoqiu

Process#

Field research documents both slab-built and mould-assisted production in contemporary Yixing. Similar shapes can result from different materials and processes; appearance alone does not establish a vessel’s manufacture. Gao, Hein & Quinn 2023

Periods#

1. Song – presentEnglish Wikipedia dates the use of Yixing clay to the Song, when it was first mined near Lake Tai.⁶
2. Song–Yuan – presentThe heritage record says the craft is said to begin in the Song–Yuan period and matured in the Ming, with over 600 years of history.¹
3. MingZhou Gaoqi (1640s) writes that within the last hundred years teapots of silver, tin and Fujian or Henan porcelain had given way to Yixing pottery, and that pots by famous hands sold for as much as gold. He tells the craft's start as a story heard from potters: an unnamed Jinsha Temple monk, then Gongchun, then four Wanli-era masters and Shi Dabin.⁷

Two round pots in the Palace Museum catalogue carry an imperial poem on one side, with a round 乾 and a square 隆 impression below it. Turn the pots to see the pine-and-rock design. The catalogue dates the writing of the poem to 1742 and the vessels to the Qianlong reign. A separate hexagonal pot in the museum pairs the same poem with a tea-making scene. (no. 20 · p. 50–51 (PDF 53–54) · 故宫博物院 · 故00157135)

Kiln sites#

Ambiguities#

• Yixing also has a separate national heritage item for junta (宜兴均陶制作技艺, Ⅷ-98, 2014 extension): thick-glazed pottery with piled coloured-clay decoration (堆花) on white or purple clay bodies, mainly everyday coarse ware. It is a different craft from unglazed zisha, though both are centred on Dingshu.⁸

Heritage listings#

In other traditions#

• Influenced by (from that entry) Japanese teapot 日Japan. Japanese Wikipedia says the rear handle is said to come from the Yixing pot and that Banko and Tokoname imitated Yixing red and purple clay pots.
• Influenced by (from that entry) Tokoname ware 日Japan. A paper on Jin Shiheng says he taught the Yixing teapot method at Tokoname in 1878; the tourism commentary says mid-19th-century techniques from China produced the red-clay kyūsu.

Related#