Who can identify the purple teapot?

Characteristics of purple sand pottery

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First, Zisha pottery is a kind of pottery made of sand, which neither captures the aroma of tea nor the taste of boiled soup, so it is used to make tea with both color and flavor.

Second, the sandy teapot can absorb tea juice, and it will accumulate "tea rust" after being used for a period of time, so pouring boiling water into the empty pot has a tea fragrance.

Third, it is easy to wash. If you don't use it for a long time, it will inevitably smell. You can make tea with boiling water two or three times, then pour cold water, and then make the same original tea.

Fourth, it has strong adaptability to sudden changes in heat and cold. In the cold winter, the injected boiling water will not burst due to the sudden change of temperature; Moreover, the heat transfer of sand is slow, and it is not hot whether it is lifted or held.

Fifth, purple sand pottery is resistant to burning, and it is not allowed to explode on a warm fire in winter. It is no accident that Su Dongpo made tea with a teapot made of purple sand pottery, and there was a poem "The bamboo stove relaxed the wind and lifted the pot to shout". This is why people who pay attention to tea drinking at all times and in all countries especially like to use teapots.

Practicality of teapot

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Teapots are used for making and pouring tea. It has long been concluded that the performance of teapot is "color, fragrance and taste". Moreover, scientific institutions have also made a detailed test of "the summer months are getting worse and worse", and the angle casserole and ceramics have indeed confirmed that casserole is much superior to ceramics. This conclusion is based on the uniqueness of purple sand raw materials. The teapot is practical, because of its high porosity, which makes it have the advantage of good permeability. According to the History of Du Tao in China on page 394, purple clay is characterized by high iron content ... and there are a lot of aggregates in the microstructure of purple clay. There are two kinds of pores, one is the pore inside the aggregate, and the other is the pore group wrapped around the aggregate, most of which are open pores. The good permeability of purple clay may be related to this special microstructure. According to the determination of physical and chemical properties of various clays by Yixing Ceramic Company, it is found that the porosity of purple clay is as high as 10%. Therefore, it shows that good air permeability is of course the main reason for "rich color, fragrance and taste of tea" and "staying up late in summer". The good plasticity and bonding ability of purple sand mud are the reasons why it is beneficial to craft decoration. Moreover, the firing temperature range of purple mud is very wide, from 1 190 degrees Celsius to 1270 degrees Celsius. At present, the firing temperature is controlled at about 1200 degrees Celsius, which is another reason why purple sand products are watertight and not aging, and the more they are used, the more shiny they become. All the above shows that this kind of purple sand soil mixed with fine sandy sandstone is the best clay for making pottery pots and a unique treasure in Yixing, Tao Dou.

Now many people mistakenly think that all clay pots are teapots, but they are not. The purple sand pottery tea set made of purple sand pottery clay in Yixing, Jiangsu Province is recognized as the best tea set in the world.

Advantages of teapot

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Zhou, an Amin, said in the Ming Pot System in Yangxian County: "Pots have been made of silver, tin, Fujian and Henan porcelain in the past hundred years, but Yixing pottery is still popular." Why do you like Yixing teapot? Zhou said to him again, "What do peaches and plums take?" Take them all away and use the sand on this mountain to make the real color and fragrance of tea. "It turns out that the beauty of Yixing teapot is that it can get the color and fragrance of tea. Li Yu's Essay also said: "The note of tea is better than sand, and the essence of the pot is nothing more than envy. "Wen Zhenheng's Chronicle of the Long Story also said:" The teapot is topped with sand, and the lid of the teapot neither steals incense nor smells cooked soup. "In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, some scholars had the same understanding of the advantages of Yixing teapot.

Yixing teapot is loved by tea people, on the one hand, because of its beautiful shape, diverse styles and unique features, on the other hand, because it has many advantages in making tea.

(1) Purple sand is a kind of porous material with double pore structure, with fine pores and high density. Using a teapot to make tea without losing its original flavor and lingering fragrance is the real fragrance and delicious tea. The Chronicle of History says it "neither captures the fragrance nor smells like boiled soup".

(2) The teapot has good air permeability, and the tea leaves are not easy to deteriorate during use and will not deteriorate in summer. If you don't use it for a long time, it won't smell. Just store the boiling water first, pour it out immediately, and then soak it in cold water to wash it, and your vitality will be restored, and the tea will still taste the same.

(3) The teapot can absorb tea juice, and the inner wall of the teapot is not painted, so there is no peculiar smell when making tea. After long-term use, the wall of teapot accumulates "tea rust", which makes the empty teapot full of boiling water, which is related to the porosity of teapot embryo, which is the unique quality of teapot.

(4) The teapot has good cold and hot mutation performance. In cold winter, boiling water is injected into the teapot, which will never burst because of sudden temperature change. At the same time, the heat transfer of sand is slow, so it won't be hot after making tea. And it can be cooked and heated on slow fire without being cracked by fire.

(5) The longer the purple sand is used, the brighter the color of the pot body will be and the charm will be Wen Ya. If the teapot is used for a long time, the pot body will become smoother and more lovely because of touching and wiping, so Long Wen said in the Book of Tea: "Love is like palm beads. After using it for a long time, it looks like purple jade outside and Yun Lan inside. " "Cultivating Immortals and Ming Pot System" says: "When the pot is used for a long time, you can see spontaneous dark light when you wash your mouth." .

"Yangxian Tea Pot System" said: "The pot is real tea, and it is lively in the New Year, so that it is full of color and fragrance. Therefore, the pot should be small but not big, shallow but not deep, the lid should be straight and not awkward, and the soup should be fragrant, so that it can be combined into one. " Feng Kebin also said in the Book of Tea: "The teapot is small and expensive. Every guest, a pot, let it drink backwards, is interesting. What is this? The pot is small, the fragrance does not come loose, and the taste does not last. The fragrance in the tea is not before, it is not enough too early, and it is too late, just right, and it is done. " Yixing Zisha Pot flourished from the middle of Ming Dynasty, and after continuous improvement, it finally became the best tea set for appreciating elegance and vulgarity and drinking tea.

Zisha pot style

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According to experts, a teapot has seven parts: button, lid, ampulla, handle, spout, foot and air hole. From the production process, it can be divided into circle foot, nail foot, square foot and flat foot; There are three kinds of buttons: bead button, bridge button and object button. The pot cover is provided with an embedded cover, a gland and a cutting cover; There are single handles, ring handles, inclined handles and beam handles, and the shapes are really varied.

All kinds of teapot handed down from ancient times have certain names, and there are dozens of popular ones now. Such as foreign barrels, a pearl, dragon eggs, Sifang, Bafang, Meiping, bamboo segments, ichthyosaurs, longevity and so on. , still very popular. Modern people pay more attention to the collection value of teapot. Considering its collection value alone, the ancient teapot is priceless, and the inch-handle teapot is even more precious.

Identification of teapot

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To evaluate the connotation of a teapot, we must have three main factors: beautiful structure, exquisite craftsmanship and excellent use function. The so-called image structure refers to the spout, wrench, lid, buckle and foot of the pot, which should be coordinated with the overall proportion of the pot body. Exquisite skills are the criteria for judging the quality of pot art. Excellent practical functions refer to proper volume and weight, easy grip of pot body, smooth rut and seam of pot body, and smooth spout water. At the same time, we should consider the exquisite harmony of colors and patterns?

If we talk abstractly about the aesthetics of teapot art, it can be summarized as four elements: form, spirit, qi and state. Form, that is, formal beauty, refers to the outline of the work, that is, the figurative face; God is verve, a charm that can make people experience spiritual beauty; Qi, that is, temperament, is the essential beauty embodied in pot art; State, that is, form, refers to various postures of a work, such as height, height, fat, thinness, rigidity, softness, squareness and roundness. From these aspects, it is a really perfect good work. But here we must distinguish between reason and interest. If the pot lovers are biased and haggle over the size of the pot, the pot mouth should be straight, the pot cover should be straight, the pot body should be tall and short, and the focus should be on making tea and drinking, then they will only be sensible and boring. Appreciation of art should be both reasonable and interesting. No matter how big or small the work is, whether the spout is curved or straight, whether the lid is vertical or flat, and whether the shape is high or short, it cares about interest, can generate emotions and nourish the soul, and can never tire of playing. Therefore, to appreciate a new style, we must first understand the essence of inverted beauty before we can comment on it. Starting from this aesthetic attitude, we can win the praise of sand fans. Of course, as a practical handicraft, its applicability is also very important, and the comfort in use can please the body and mind and cause harmonious interest. Therefore, according to the habits and customs of drinking tea, we should selectively consider the capacity of the pot body, the smooth outflow of water from the spout, the labor-saving comfort of holding the handle and so on. These must be considered within a specific scope?

At present, the criteria for judging the quality of Yixing teapot can be summarized by five words: "mud, shape, workmanship, style and merit". The first four words are artistic standards, and the last one is functional standards, which are described as follows:

One is "mud": the teapot is famous all over the world, which is inseparable from its production, but the fundamental reason is its superiority in making raw material purple sand mud. When analyzing the raw materials of purple sand, many ceramic monographs in modern times talked about the composition of iron oxide in it. In fact, there are a lot of mud containing iron oxide all over the country, but purple sand can't be produced elsewhere, which shows that the key to the problem lies not in containing iron oxide, but in the "sand" of purple sand. According to the analysis of modern science, the molecular structure of purple sand mud is different from other mud, that is, the same purple sand mud, with different structures and subtle differences. In this way, due to the different raw materials, the functional utility and sensory experience are different.

Good function and utility, high quality, otherwise poor quality; Good sensory perception leads to high quality, and vice versa. Therefore, to evaluate the quality of a teapot, the first thing is the quality of mud. The change of mud color only brings people different visual feelings, which is not helpful to function and feel. The teapot is a work of art with strong practical function. Especially due to the habit of use, the teapot needs to be explored constantly to make it feel comfortable and achieve the purpose of psychological pleasure. Therefore, the feeling of purple sand surface is more important than mud color. Compared with other clays, purple sand has a remarkable feature that it feels different. A person familiar with purple sand can tell purple sand from non-purple sand with his eyes closed. This is touching non-purple sand objects, just like glass objects-sticky hands, while touching purple sand objects is like touching bean paste-fine but not greasy, very comfortable. So it is very important to evaluate the feel of a teapot. The popular casserole in recent years is the product of emphasizing this quality and feel.

The second is "shape": the shape of the teapot is the richest in all kinds of utensils in the world, and it is known as "the square is different and the circle is different". How to evaluate these shapes is also "different people have different opinions", because the social function of art is to meet people's psychological needs, since there are various psychological needs; Generous love, generous love, delicate love, Gu Zhuo's love for Gu Zhuo, playful love, everyone has their own love and can't be forced. From the author's point of view, I think Gu Zhuo is the best, followed by generosity, beauty and fun. What is the reason? Since the teapot is an integral part of the whole tea culture, the artistic conception it pursues should be "indifferent and peaceful, detached and refined" pursued by the tea ceremony. Gu Zhuo is in the most harmonious atmosphere, so Gu Zhuo is the best. Many pot makers know this truth and imitate Gu Zhuo. As a result, they lost their cuteness. You know, works of art are the expression of the author's mood, the result of self-cultivation, and irreplaceable by others. Therefore, there is no need to imitate.

Many traditional shapes of teapots left over from history, such as stone peach, mine field, monk hat, mound ball, eggplant section, solitary mausoleum, plum blossom, antique, etc., are the only outstanding works left over from years of erosion and still shine in today's perspective. Now many artists are copying, and they all have similarities and differences. For example, according to incomplete statistics, there are more than 100 kinds of stone pottery pots, because artists at all times and all over the world have integrated their aesthetic interests into their works. Speaking of "form", people often compare it with the schools of teapot art, and think that the schools of teapot can be divided into "ribbed bag", "fancy goods" and "light goods". In fact, this is a very analytical method. The reason is very simple, just like the genre classification of a drama performer, it is not determined by what drama he plays, but by his pursuit of interest in drama performance. In their artistic career, once the art is mature, an artist will inevitably form his personal style, and several similar personal styles will become a genre. Art is feeling. The quality of teapot depends entirely on personal feelings. The "equal sample" and "equal potential" of a teapot are the "scales" of modeling. After talking about a lot of profound theories, it is likely that it will become more and more unclear. Isn't there a saying that you can only understand, but you can't explain? The artistic feeling depends entirely on the inner voice and the understanding of the heart, which is called "but I feel the harmonious heartbeat of the sacred unicorn".

The third is "work": China's art has many similarities, such as the dance movements of Beijing opera and the freehand brushwork of Chinese painting, all of which belong to the bold category; Beijing opera singing and traditional Chinese painting meticulous brushwork are strictly listed; Modelling technique of Zisha Pot is similar to Beijing Opera singing and Chinese painting, and it is also very rigorous.

Point, line and surface are the basic elements that constitute the modeling of teapot. In the process of teapot formation, it must be explained clearly. Just like meticulous painting, it is necessary to make clear the use of pens, twists and turns, and cadences. The face must be light and the hair must be hairy; The line must be straight and curved; Points must be square, round and round, and there can be no ambiguity. Otherwise, it is not a good pot. According to the special requirements of the molding process of teapot, the spout and handle should be absolutely in a straight line and the weight should be balanced; The spout should be closely combined with the lid. This is also the requirement of "work".

The fourth is "money": money is money in the pot. Appreciating the teapot has two meanings: one is to identify the author of the teapot or the author of the poem. The other meaning is to appreciate the content of the inscription, the calligraphy and painting, and the seal (lithograph seal cutting). The decorative art of teapot is a part of China's traditional art, which has the remarkable characteristics of China's traditional art of "poetry, calligraphy, painting and seal". Therefore, in addition to mud color, modeling and production time, a teapot can also see literature, calligraphy, painting, epigraphy and many other aspects, which can bring more beautiful enjoyment to pot watchers.

Traditionally, teapots are priced according to people, and famous pots are worth a hundred times. Especially in the commodity society. In this way, many famous imitations are easy to appear in the market, and counterfeit products are also very common, especially when buying famous pots.

5. "Work": The so-called "work" refers to the functional beauty of the pot. In recent years, new products of teapot emerge one after another, such as dazzling stars. Pot makers pay attention to the formal beauty of modeling, but often ignore the phenomenon of functional beauty, which can be seen everywhere. In particular, some pot makers don't drink tea themselves and know little about the habit of drinking tea, which directly affects the function of teapot, and some pots may even be "useless".

In fact, the biggest difference between teapot and other works of art is that it is a very practical work of art, and its "art" lies in "use" and "quality". If the meaning of "use" is lost, "art" will cease to exist. Therefore, we must not ignore the functional beauty of the pot.

Functional beauty of teapot

Medium ability;

(2) Appropriate height;

(3) cover tightly;

(4) The water flow is smooth.

According to the current tea drinking habits of southerners in China (including Hongkong and Taiwan Province), generally two to five people drink tea, and the best capacity is 350 ml. Its capacity is just about four cups, and it only needs one hand to touch it, so it is called "one-handed pot". The height of the teapot has its own purpose. High pot is small, so it is appropriate to make black tea; Short pot is big, suitable for making green tea, but it must be moderate. If it is too high, the tea will lose its taste. If it is too short, the tea will easily overflow from the lid, and the scenery will be great. The scenery was also blocked by the poor spout. A few small tea beads turn into big leaves in the pot, which is easy to block the spout. At present, according to the habits of tea drinkers, the spout has been renamed independent, making the water flow smoother than before. It seems that it has little to do with functional beauty, but attention should be paid to hygiene. All these are functional standards.

Maintenance of teapot

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(a) After use, the teapot must be kept dry and do not accumulate moisture.

(2) Where the air circulates, it should not be placed in a sultry place, and it should not be expensive, wrapped or sealed after use.

(3) Don't put it where there is a lot of oil smoke or dust.

(4) It is best to put the cover on the side after use, and don't always cover the cover tightly.

(5) Don't soak the pot in water all the time, and then flush it when making tea.

(6) It is best to prepare more teapots, and only use the designated teapots when drinking a certain kind of tea. All kinds of tea are not allowed to use the same teapot, so it should be marked well to avoid confusion.

(7) Don't soak the teapot with detergent or any chemical, otherwise it will wipe off the tea smell and make the appearance lose luster.

(8) Absorb the water outside the pot with a cloth after each use, then pour out two-thirds of the tea leaves in the pot, leaving about one-third of the tea leaves, rinse them in boiling water for two or three times, and then clean them up.

Basic skills of teapot modeling

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Generally speaking, the molding methods of teapot can be divided into two types: cylinder beating and cylinder inlaying. These two modeling methods have existed for a long time in the production of daily-use pottery in Yixing, but they have been fully developed in the purple sand modeling process.

The tools used in the molding of teapot mainly include mud stool, wooden stool, turntable, wooden racket, bamboo racket lathe, thrush knife, sharp knife and bright needle. These are common tools for making various purple sand blanks. In addition, according to the different styles and technological requirements of teapots, many special gadgets need to be prepared.

First, hit the bucket.

The modeling method of cylinder beating is generally used for round pots. First, a pair of hammers are used to hammer the mud into a mud block with uniform thickness. The thickness of the clay tablet depends on the size of the teapot, which is usually about three or four millimeters. According to the diameter of the designed teapot, plus the shrinkage coefficient during firing, multiplied by pi, plus the allowance of the joints at both ends and the height of the cylinder, the mud piece is cut into rectangular mud strips. Surround the mud strip into a cylinder on the turntable, and the two ends overlap. At the overlapping place, use a ray knife to cut obliquely at one time, that is, form a butted interface, and then use "mud" to stick the butted incision. Purple mud is thick mud mixed with the same mud and water, and its function is a bit like gypsum used by masons to build brick walls. After bonding, mark the bonding place and remember this position so as to install the kettle handle in the future. This can cover up traces that may appear after the interface is triggered.

Then, put the fingers of the left hand into the circular mud bucket, gently hold the inner wall (because the inner lining makes the power of the external racket recoil), and beat the upper section of the outer wall of the mud bucket with the wooden clap of the right hand, while beating and turning (the radius of the inner wall of the pot and the external racket mud is slowly pinched with the left hand), and the mouth of the bucket will gradually retract miraculously. When it shrinks to the required size, seal the prepared round mud with mud (here refers to the sticky mud mixed with water repeatedly); Then turn the mud jar upside down and beat the other end of the mud jar to shrink it and seal the mouth. At this time, a hollow pot body prototype came out. Then turn the turntable, roll the barrel body with a racket according to the shape requirements, or lift or press it to expand the barrel shoulder, so that the shoulders, abdomen and feet of the pot body can be adjusted clearly, the linear combination is beautiful and the transition pavilion is uniform.

After the barrel is basically formed, the neck and feet are matched. The preparation method of the neck foot is to paste round mud pieces with different thicknesses on the upper and lower ends of the cylinder (the diameter of the mud pieces is the outer diameter of the neck foot). After the outer edge of the spout is aligned with the outer edge of the foot, cut off the middle part of the mud sheet with a ruler and take it out, leaving mud on the collar and foot ring. In addition, the mouth, handle and cover should be prepared, and all kinds of "line stalks" (special gadgets made of horns or bamboo, a bit like the "line planer" used by carpenters when making window frames) should be repeatedly squeezed and trimmed to make the edge lines clear and smooth. There is a circle of straight and wide "sub-mouth" under the cover of the sand pot. The outer diameter of the sub-opening must be closely matched with the inner diameter of the spout and can rotate. When installing the spout of the kettle handle, first find the seam of the mud piece when beating the bucket. Generally, a kettle handle is installed on one side of the joint, and then a water sieve hole is dug in advance on one side of the joint, and then the spout is glued. Ensure that the barrel mouth, handle and vertical center surface overlap on the same section. At this time, the blank of the teapot is basically completed. The remaining work is to press the whole body with a bright needle to achieve the requirement of "exposing the blank when it is loosened". Finally, seal the author's name on the bottom and lid of the pot, dry it and wait for it to be fired in the kiln.

Second, wooden barrels

The formation method of square (including square, hexagon, octagon, etc.). Pots mainly adopts the method of inserting tube. Also, first make clay tablets, prepare a sample according to the design intention, cut the clay tablets according to the sample, and connect the clay tablets with mud to make a small clay box, which is the prototype of the teapot. Then pat, pinch and press with tools to prepare the mouth, handle and cover to complete the decoration.

In fact, the process of crushing mud is to make the mud particles dense and the mud doors arranged neatly through external force. This is much stronger than the product formed by grouting.

Good raw ore purple sand mud has excellent plasticity and is not easy to deform after firing. This special molding process can ensure that the dimensions meet the specifications and the styles have rich changes. Generally speaking, as long as the design is reasonable, all kinds of casserole can be made and shaped by hand. A casserole with a set style can be made repeatedly, and their specifications, shapes and sizes can also be highly unified. In fact, in the process of making sand pots, in order to facilitate the connection of various processes, four or six pieces of the same style are always made at the same time, which is called "one thing" in jargon.

Similarities and differences between purple sand and porcelain

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Pottery and porcelain are both arts with clay as the language, but there are also differences between them. The basic raw materials of ceramics are the same. The ancients said, "The essence of pottery is called porcelain". In contrast, porcelain is pure white, non-absorbent and translucent, so Jingdezhen porcelain is described as: as thin as paper, as white as snow and as loud as sound. Pottery is different, although there are white pottery, but the whiteness is not as good as porcelain, and it is opaque. Porcelain is generally glazed, but pottery is not; Purple sand is a kind of unglazed pottery. Porcelain and pottery have their own advantages and disadvantages, both of which are long and short. Porcelain is noble and elegant. Pottery is simple and friendly; The former is as charming as a girl in a boudoir, while the latter is as energetic as a village man in the mountains. Ceramics are like eight Chinese cuisines. Spicy Sichuan cuisine and light Cantonese cuisine, depending on your hobbies. It is for this reason that as long as you like it from the heart, there is no need to compare pottery with porcelain, and it is meaningless.

Tools for making teapots

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In Jingdezhen, I saw workers making porcelain by hand; Drawing blank is a traditional ceramic production method. Han Meilin, a famous artist, designed a symbol for Yixing ceramic art according to the ancient Chinese writing of "Tao" in China. It seems that a person on the right is pulling the blank on the left. This symbol is both concise and connotative, and the pictographic meaning of "Tao" is expressed at once. Jingdezhen porcelain is mostly round, and a piece of work is completed by molding and decoration respectively, while Yixing purple sand has various forms, unless it is painted and pasted on the blank, it is often completed at one time. There are dozens of molding methods for teapot, which are only tools for teapot. I will not introduce them one by one here, but only select a few representative ones to make some explanations:

1, raft: used to make mud strips and films. 2, sharp knife: used for cutting, cutting buttons, turning feet, leather facets. 3. Rectangular car: also called gauge car, like compasses, it is used to draw disks and open holes; 4, grate: mainly made of bamboo, according to different pot bodies, made of different radians, used to organize the shape of the blank. 5. Copper tube: drill holes of various sizes. 6. Top column: a special wooden tool with a bottom seal after the molding process is completed. 7, wooden racket: used to beat barrels, take pictures, pat the mouth. 8. Bamboo swatter: There are three types: large, medium and small, which are mainly used for beating barrels, pushing barrel joints, skimming mud, pushing walls and scraping the bottom to make spout. 9. Fur knife: it can be used for cutting, cutting, loosening, picking, clamping, digging and scraping. And it is a common tool; 10, Ming needle: made of ox horn, elastic, with square head, pointed head, bent head, etc. , mainly used to scrape the blank to make it smooth, Ming needle is only used in the ceramic industry to make purple sand. 1 1, unique: it is used for round mouth and eyes, and it is made of high-quality ox horn, ivory, boxwood and rosewood. 12. turntable: it can rotate when beating barrels. Now it is mainly made of iron.

And an excellent purple sand artist has very high requirements for tools, so he must be handy. Why are handmade teapots valuable? Just because the teapot left the artist's fingerprints, it is impossible to count. After many times of polishing, wiping, scraping and sweeping ... the artist's emotions are poured into the teapot, not as fast as some mechanically or semi-mechanically operated clay adobe.

Teapot molding

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In Fanjiahuzhuang and Jidetang's pottery workshop, you can see thousands of styles of purple sand utensils. It can be said that "the parties are different, and there is no phase." According to the traditional classification, Yixing's teapot can be divided into three categories, one is called light ware, also known as light goods, that is, teapot with round, square and other geometric shapes, such as pot and west pot; Second, flower devices are also called flower goods, that is, pictographic objects are used as basic shapes or plastic stickers for animal and plant modeling, such as childhood friends and spring; Third, said rib, also known as rib bag goods. This kind of pot is represented by various lines, such as Lingyi and Fang Ju petal pot.

Different types of molding methods are also different; The traditional modeling method of purple sand mainly adopts two forms: cylinder beating and cylinder inlay. According to the different requirements of utensils, the mud is broken into blocks and standardized into squares, and then the barrel is inlaid, and the neck, feet, mouth, handle, cover and button are added. This is the biggest feature of teapot forming, also called "enclosure method". Pictographs also pinch some plastic bodies, such as dragons and phoenixes, flowers and birds, and then pile them on the pot. Generally speaking, when making ribbed vessels, the clay tablets should be pressed into the plaster model to make it a part of the pot body as needed, and then taken out for inlaying. Nowadays, when creating new products, ceramists should first conceive, draw pictures and calculate the size ratio before making them.

Textual research on teapot

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Zisha pot is a kind of ceramic tea set produced in Yixing, Jiangsu Province in Ming and Qing Dynasties. The teapot has no peculiar smell when making tea, and the stored tea leaves do not change color. Even in summer, the brewed tea is not easy to deteriorate. Because of the long brewing time of tea leaves, it takes a long time for tea elements to penetrate into ceramics. If it is only soaked in water, it also has obvious tea fragrance.

The key processes such as mud selection and pot blank making are all manual operations, so the production is very fine. Generally, ceramic bodies are not glazed, and they win by their true colors. It's just that after the ceramic blank is formed, the patterns of calligraphy, painting and poetry printed on it should be filled in the outline with powdery pigments. This natural color and coloring method is a remarkable feature of purple clay pots.

In terms of modeling, although every famous pot maker has his own style and characteristics, it can be roughly divided into three types: plain color, gluten and relief.

There are two ways to identify the authenticity of teapot. First, from the bright colors, the real teapot is purple in both weight and color. Because it has been touched for a long time, it is shiny. The newly made teapot is generally loose in texture, yellow in color, less in light and dim. Even if there is light, it is polished with white wax.

Literally, the old pots are all from Yang Wen, and the fonts are extremely neat. If the new pot is written by Yang Wen, the font is imitated or plain, or the strokes are different in length and thickness. If you carve a new pot from an old pot, the carved text is verse.

Buy a teapot

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The casserole is not only a functional and practical product, but also a work of art that can be played and appreciated. Therefore, a good teapot should be highly affirmed in three aspects: practicality, craftsmanship and artistry. Ceramic lovers may wish to consider the following points when purchasing teapot.

Practical function refers to its volume and capacity, the handle of the pot is easy to carry, the water from the pot is the smoothest, and it is convenient for tea tasting and making. Therefore, the choice of teapot should be based on personal tea drinking habits, such as the capacity of teapot, the smoothness of initial water, the comfort of holding teapot handle and so on.

A good teapot should be in harmony with the overall proportion of the pot body except the flow, handle, button, cover, shoulder, abdomen and circle, and the transition of points, lines and surfaces should be clear and smooth. It is also necessary to examine its standards from four aspects: mud, shape, wind and work.

Excellent purple sand mud should have the remarkable characteristics of "not bright in color and not greasy in quality", so the quality of purple sand mud should be investigated when purchasing purple sand pots. Teapots come in various shapes. As for which style and style to choose, it is difficult to generalize because of different personal needs. But since the teapot belongs to the whole tea culture, the artistic conception it pursues should belong to the indifferent and refined artistic conception pursued by the tea ceremony. Therefore, the shape of teapot should show the charm of ancient pot art and painting and calligraphy art, and the seals used are often from the hands of a famous lithograph seal engraver. The functional beauty of teapot is mainly manifested in four aspects: moderate capacity, appropriate height, tight cover and smooth water outlet.

Purple sand art is a kind of artistic creation form that "originates from life and is higher than life". A good teapot should not only pay attention to the perfection of form and exquisite craftsmanship, but also examine patterns, decorative materials and craftsmanship. A perfect work must have both form and spirit and vivid charm in order to show strong artistic appeal.