teatime

Inge Nielsen is a name that will need little introduction for many tea lovers. A Danish potter working in Brussels, Inge studied pottery in Taipei. She makes a variety of stoneware vessels, but has become known primarily for her teaware - beautiful and functional pieces sized perfectly for Chinese tea sessions.

We have long been admirers of her art and were very happy to be able to showcase her work here at Mud&Leaves. We were also very interested in her process, and Inge was kind enough to discuss it with us.

With the advent of gas and electric kilns, wood kilns, with their more labour and resource intensive requirements, were increasingly seen as impractical and obsolete. By the 1970s and 1980s gas and electric kilns replaced wood kilns in the industry in Nixing. While gas and electric kilns still dominate the industry, there has been a recent rekindling of interest in the traditional wood firing process. The kiln described below is the one used to fire our wood fired Nixing teapots and is one of less than a handful of large wood kilns still operating in Nixing today.

Lin Hanpeng prides himself on his clay, the work he does in selecting the raw ore, and processing and aging it himself. For the past month, he has been sending us photos of the ore he gathered nearly 3 years ago, as he gets closer to completing his latest batch of teapots – Zhuni dahongpao shuipings. Lin is very excited to see the result of firing this clay, convinced it’s some of the best dahongpao he has processed yet.

The No.4 Mine in Huanglong Mountain opened in 1972 and closed in 1997. The mine sits on the southwest side of the mountain. The mine penetrates deeper than most into the mountain, in some spots reaching as deep as 80m. A report from 1987 shows that only 0.012% of the ore mined at the time contained lüni.

Where does Pear Skin Zhuni come from? How is this bumpy texture created?

Sometimes marketed as being an exotic variety of zhuni clay, or old storage “lao” zhuni clay, pear skin zhuni is produced through a very old technique that is still practiced in Yixing today, called 调砂 Tiaosha.

Where does it come from and what exactly is it? Hongni is one of the most enigmatic clays in Yixing. 

One of the first things that you will read about Yixing Teapots is that they “season” with use.

Before first using a new Yixing Teapot, there are a few short steps that should be taken, and a few simple rules to follow to keep the pot in good condition for future tea sessions.

We always recommend trying a new teapot with as many different kinds of tea as possible. You may be surprised by what goes well with a certain kind of clay.

Can you tell if an Yixing Teapot is real by banging the lid against the body? What does a real Yixing Teapot sound like? Should zhuni ring like a bell?
 

The lacquer is made using sap from the Chinese lacquer tree (Toxicodendron vernicifluum, also known as Japanese sumac and varnish tree). After filtering and heat treating, the sap is mixed with pigments and applied as layers of varnish to the outside of the cups. The video above shows each step in this process. 

A deep yet brilliant red, Jihong is one of the classic glaze colors of Jingdezhen. Although the ingredients in the recipe are known, the difficulty of firing this glaze has meant that many porcelain studios choose an easier, more modern recipe to achieve a red glaze. Porcelain pieces that are made with the original glaze recipe for jihong are known as "fanggu" porcelain for their adherence to the original recipe.