a handcrafted earthenware art form unique to China
Yixing purple clay teapots are a kind of handcrafted earthenware unique to China, originating in Dingshu Town of Yixing, Jiangsu Province during the Zhengde reign of the Ming Dynasty and made from the local purple clay as the raw material. Their crafting technique originated with the tree burl teapot created by Gong Chun; after being fired at a temperature of 1,100 to 1,200 degrees Celsius, the teapots form a double-layered porous structure, boasting the characteristics of air permeability without water seepage, and retaining tea aroma without dissipating its flavor. Purple clay is high in iron content, with the ore extracted from Huanglong Mountain and its surrounding designated mining areas. Composed of quartz, mica and clay minerals, the natural properties of this ore endow Yixing purple clay teapots with both practical functions and artistic and craft value.
Yixing purple clay teapots fall into such categories as plainware, flowerware and ribbed ware, and their making involves traditional techniques including clay body throwing and piecing. Renowned masters across the dynasties include Shi Dabin of the Ming Dynasty, Chen Mingyuan of the Qing Dynasty and Gu Jingzhou of modern times, whose works often incorporate elements of calligraphy and seal carving. In 2015, a set of Squirrel and Grape teapots made by Gu Jingzhou was auctioned for 92 million yuan. Due to the scarcity of raw clay materials, a mining ban on purple clay ore was implemented in Yixing in 2005, and the traditional crafting technique of Yixing purple clay teapots has been inscribed on the national list of intangible cultural heritage.
Origin of Yixing Purple Clay Teapots
The generally recognized founder of Yixing purple clay teapots is Gong Chun, who lived during the Zhengde to Jiajing reigns of the Ming Dynasty. As recorded in the Preface to Ode to Yixing Porcelain Teapots by Wu Meiding: “My great-uncle Quan Shigong studied in the Southern Mountain, with a young servant named Gong Chun in attendance. Gong Chun saw local potters making vats from clay, so he purified the clay to craft teapots—pieces of exquisite antique grace and great charm, the very Gong Chun teapots known to all.”
Gong Chun’s teapots were praised in his time with this twelve-character description: “Chestnut-hued and matte, like ancient iron; robust in form and perfectly well-proportioned.” These few words paint a vivid picture of the teapots. Regrettably, no original Gong Chun teapot survives today. Even a replica crafted by the modern Yixing purple clay master Gu Jingzhou was auctioned for around 600,000 Hong Kong dollars, a testament to the unparalleled artistic value of Gong Chun’s teapots.
Gong Chun passed on his craft to Shi Dabin, who, along with his disciples Xu Youquan and Li Zhongfang, was hailed as one of the three “master hands” of Yixing purple clay art after the Wanli reign of the Ming Dynasty. Shi Dabin’s teapots featured an elegant and refined style with smooth, fluid forms. Rejecting excessive elaborate carving, his works embodied masterful ingenuity, with a simple grace, solid texture, and an indescribable subtle beauty. His accomplished disciple Xu Youquan sighed in his later years: “For all my meticulous craftsmanship, I can never match the unadorned artistry of my master Shi.”
Xu Youquan was a master of delicate handiwork, renowned for crafting teapots modeled after the forms of ancient bronze artifacts—pieces of archaic simplicity, solemnity, and profound modesty. A legend tells that when Xu Youquan was a young apprentice of Shi Dabin, he begged his master to mold a clay ox for him, but Shi refused. Just then, a real ox passed by outside the house. Quick-witted, Xu snatched a lump of clay, rushed outside, and modeled the clay after the real ox. Shi Dabin was greatly impressed by his talent and gladly taught him all his secret skills. Later, Xu truly established a unique style of his own. These four artisans are celebrated as the first generation of great Yixing purple clay masters.
The second generation of masters emerged in the early Qing Dynasty, represented by Chen Mingyuan and Hui Mengchen.
Chen Mingyuan drew inspiration for his teapot designs from everyday objects in life: chestnuts, walnuts, peanuts, water caltrops, arrowheads, Chinese water chestnuts, lotus flowers, frogs, and more. His craftsmanship was exquisite and intricate, and he excelled at the technique of layering and sculpting clay to create reliefs. He transformed Yixing teapots into vivid, lifelike sculptural artworks brimming with vitality and charm. He also pioneered the practice of inscribing artist marks on the bottom of teapots and stamping seals inside the lids—a tradition that evolved into a fixed craft procedure in the Qing Dynasty and exerted a profound influence on the development of Yixing purple clay teapots. His works were so consummate and renowned that a flood of imitations and forgeries soon appeared. Gu Jingzhou once said that in more than half a century, from his youth as an apprentice to his old age, he had only seen a handful of authentic Chen Mingyuan pieces, warning collectors to exercise extreme caution to avoid being deceived.
Hui Mengchen, active during the Tianqi and Chongzhen reigns of the late Ming Dynasty, specialized in crafting small teapots that achieved great artistry in miniature. His teapots bore inscriptions carved with a bamboo knife, and the finest pieces were marked with a small seal engraved with the seal script Yonglin inside the lid.
The third generation of masters flourished during the Jiaqing and Daoguang reigns of the mid-Qing Dynasty, led by Chen Hongshou and Yang Pengnian. Chen Hongshou was a famous calligrapher, painter, and seal carver of the mid-Qing Dynasty who advocated for artistic innovation. He held that “calligraphy, poetry, painting and prose need not be flawless, but they must possess the ‘natural charm of heaven’.” He applied this artistic philosophy to purple clay teapot craftsmanship, making two pivotal contributions: first, he integrated poetry, calligraphy, and painting with purple clay art, inscribing poems and essays and carving paintings on teapots with a bamboo knife; second, he designed a great many novel teapot forms with spontaneous inspiration and innate talent, infusing Yixing purple clay art with new vitality. His collaboration with Yang Pengnian is hailed as a model of artistic partnership in the field.
Notably, Shao Daheng of the Jiaqing-Daoguang period was another master of unparalleled skill after Chen Mingyuan. However, subsequent artisans such as Shao Youlan, Shao Youting, Jiang Dexiu, Huang Yulin, and Cheng Shouzhen saw a gradual decline in artistic quality. Most of them merely followed established traditions with little innovation, and their craftsmanship grew increasingly hasty and slipshod.
Gu Jingzhou, the Grand Master of Yixing Purple Clay
In modern times, the preeminent master of Yixing purple clay teapots is undoubtedly the venerable Gu Jingzhou. He devoted over sixty years to the art of purple clay pottery, attaining a consummate and unparalleled level of craftsmanship that brought him renown far and wide.
The Seven Great Master Artisans after the founding of the People’s Republic of China are: Gu Jingzhou, Ren Ganting, Wu Yungen, Zhu Kexin, Pei Shimin, Wang Yinchun and Jiang Rong.
The representative figures of contemporary Yixing purple clay art include Xu Xiutang, Xu Hantang, Bao Zhiqiang, Gao Haigeng, He Daohong, Wang Yinxian, Lv Yaochen, Zhou Guizhen, Li Changhong, Gu Shaopei, Lv Junjie, Ge Jun and others. Each of them is a master of unique craftsmanship, boasting their own expertise in both the making and design of purple clay teapots, and all are regarded as outstanding talents of their time.
Introduction to Yixing Purple Clay Teapots
Yixing purple clay teapots are a handcrafted earthenware art form unique to the Han ethnic group of China, though mass production by machinery is also common nowadays. Crafted from purple clay and originally produced in Yixing, Jiangsu Province, they are also known as Yixing purple clay teapots. These teapots have seen a rising market trend in auctions and are collectible “antiques”; works by renowned masters are often hard to come by. As a well-known saying goes, “Jewels of the world are hardly worth seeking, for Yixing purple clay teapots are the greatest treasure to possess.
Yixing purple clay teapots are the most renowned among all purple clay teapots. Brewing tea with an Yixing purple clay teapot neither impairs the tea’s authentic fragrance nor leaves a stale boiled taste, and it can preserve the tea’s color, aroma and flavor for a long time. Purple clay tea sets are also highly prized for their simple, elegant and unique shapes as well as their distinctive temperament—after being steeped in tea and caressed by hands, they take on a hue of ancient jade, which makes them all the more beloved.
Purple clay is truly an exceptional natural gift unique to Yixing, as its composition encompasses all the necessary chemical and mineral constituents for pottery making. Microscopic observation reveals that the main minerals in purple clay are quartz, clay, mica and hematite. Its well-proportioned chemical, mineral and particle composition endows purple clay with excellent technological properties such as good plasticity, high green body strength and low drying shrinkage. The optimal fineness for crushed purple clay is to pass through a 60-mesh sieve.
Coarse clay demands extra effort in crafting; overly fine clay sticks to the hands during shaping, causes wrinkles on the green body surface, and also leads to increased shrinkage during drying and firing. A key finishing process is applied in the forming stage to smooth the entire body of the ware, creating a dense surface layer. Thanks to this layer, the firing temperature range of the products is expanded. Whether at the upper or lower limit of the normal firing temperature, the surface layer sinters easily, while air pores remain formed on the inner wall of the pot. Thus, the finishing process in forming organically connects clay material, forming and firing together, endowing Yixing clay ware with such characteristics as a smooth surface that is glossy without glazing, and non-leakage despite a certain porosity.
Yixing clay teapots are fired from clay, which falls into three categories: purple clay, green clay and red clay. The clay suitable for making Yixing clay teapots is usually buried deep under rock formations, with a thickness ranging from tens of centimeters to one meter. Petrographic analysis by the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics shows that purple yellow clay belongs to the kaolin-quartz-mica type with a high iron content, reaching a maximum of 8.83%. Yixing clay teapots are fired under high-oxygen and high-temperature conditions, typically with flat flame contact, at a temperature between 1100℃ and 1200℃. The water absorption rate of finished Yixing clay teapots is over 2%. The clay raw materials for Yixing clay teapots are the aforementioned purple, green and red clays, commonly known as the “noble clay”. It is named Yixing purple clay for its origin in Yixing, Jiangsu Province.
Yixing purple clay teapots are crafted for brewing and simmering tea. A long-established conclusion has been drawn about their performance: they can lock in the color, aroma and taste of tea in full measure. Moreover, scientific institutions have conducted detailed comparative tests between purple clay teapots and ceramic ones to verify the claim that tea stored in a purple clay teapot stays unspoiled overnight even in the dog days of summer—the tests confirmed that purple clay teapots are far superior to ceramic ones, a conclusion rooted in the uniqueness of purple clay raw materials.
The strong practicality of purple clay teapots stems from their relatively high porosity, which endows them with excellent air permeability. As recorded on Page 394 of A History of China’s Pottery Capital: Purple clay is characterized by a high iron content, and the microstructure of purple clay wares contains numerous agglomerations. It has two types of air pores: one is the pores inside the agglomerations, and the other is the pore clusters surrounding them, with most being open pores. The good air permeability of purple clay wares is likely attributed to this unique microstructure.
Physical and chemical property tests on various pottery clays conducted by Yixing Ceramic Company show that the porosity of purple clay is as high as over 10%—a key reason why it can lock in the full color, aroma and taste of brewed tea and keep tea unspoiled overnight in hot weather. Additionally, purple clay boasts good plasticity and bonding capacity, which makes it ideal for artistic and technical decoration. What’s more, it has a wide firing temperature range of 1190℃ to 1270℃, another factor that ensures purple clay products are non-leaking, non-aging, and grow glossier with use.
All the above facts prove that this fine silty sandstone purple clay is the optimal material for making pottery and teapots alike, and a unique treasure exclusive to Yixing, the capital of Chinese pottery.
Purple clay tea sets, fired from premium purple clay, are universally recognized as the finest tea wares in the world in terms of texture and quality.
Legends of Yixing Purple Clay
How was the uniquely endowed precious resource — Yixing purple clay — discovered? There is a beautiful legend behind it… Yixing’s Dingshan (Dingshu Town), a quiet yet beautiful small town, lies on the shore of Taihu Lake.
A long, long time ago, the villagers here worked in the fields from dawn till dusk, and in their spare time, they made daily necessities like bowls and jars with clay. They lived a simple, ordinary life free from care. One day, a strange monk appeared in the town, walking along and shouting loudly: “Precious royal clay! Precious royal clay!” The villagers all stared at him in curiosity.
Noticing the puzzlement in their eyes, the monk said again: “Must one be royal to be wealthy?” The people grew even more confused, watching him wander back and forth in silence. The strange monk raised his voice and quickened his pace, as if no one else was around. Some wise elders, finding him odd, followed him. They walked until they reached Huanglong Mountain and Qinglong Mountain — and suddenly, the monk vanished without a trace.
The elders searched everywhere, and soon spotted several newly opened caves, inside which lay clay of various hues. They carried some of this colored clay home, kneaded, shaped and fired it — and miraculously, the pottery they made came in hues unlike any they had ever seen before. Word spread fast from one person to ten, and from ten to a hundred. And so, the art of purple clay pottery took shape gradually.
