Yixing Teapots

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Handmade Authentic Yixing Teapots

Discover our handmade Yixing pottery and ceramics including teapots, mugs, cups, tea pets and more. All handmade from authentic Yixing zisha clay to improve your tea experience. Watch the video below to see how Yixing clay teapots are fully made by hand:

Where To Buy Authentic Yixing Teapots Online?

There are many places where you can buy Yixing teapots. You can check on Google maps whether there are specialized sellers or browse online stores, like Teasenz.com. Our collection of pots are curated by professionals with years of experience judging zisha teapots. At Teasenz, we work directly with individual artists or studios, so that we can offer their teapots at the best prices. 

The size of Yixing teapots

Yixing teapots are generally smaller than regular teapots with sizes ranging from just 60ml to 400ml. Teapots below 200ml are great for 1-2 person use, while above 200ml are suitable for larger groups. You may wonder: "How can such a small teapot be practical?" The fact is, Chinese tea is mostly brewed in a traditional 'gongfu' manner. When preparing tea in such a way, more tea is brewed with less water, applying very short infusions. The sames leaves can be resteeped for up to 14 times. To match such practice, smaller teapots and cups are used for traditional tea ceremonies.

Yixing Teapot Shapes

Zisha teapots come in many different shapes. Popular shapes include Xishi, Shui Ping, and Shi Piao. But don't let popularity cloud your judgement. Go for a zisha teapot that you personally love the most.

What is Yixing?

Yixing, also known as zisha, is a type of clay from Jiangsu province in China, commonly used to produce teaware such as: teapots, gaiwans, cups, mugs, tumblers and tea pets. Yixing zisha is written as 宜兴紫砂 in Chinese. The Chinese pin yin it’s written as: yíxìng zǐshā. How to pronounce Yixing? We think this is the closest we can get: ‘e-hsin’

What does Yixing/Zisha mean?

The name of this clay refers to the city of Yixing in the Southern part of Jiangsu province. The city is famous for it’s high population of Yixing teapot artists. The highest skilled artists make a living by creating a small amount of teapots per week fully by hand to sell for a fortune, while some rely on machines to mass produce. At Teasenz, we aim to team up with artists that offer great value for money. Together with them we offer you semi-handmade pots that are carefully finished and polished by hand. At the same time, the raw materials are tested by our zisha experts for authenticity.

Do you offer old/antique yixing teapots? This is a frequent question that we often receive. Unfortunately, we don’t deal in antique Yixing teapots. Dealing in old yixing teapots require a lot of knowledge, including the skill to verify the year of production. We don’t have such skill set in house and thus we aren’t comfortable with providing antique zisha pots.

Yixing Zisha teapot marks

Our teapots come with marks that refer to the artist who made them. Generally marks are stamped on the bottom of the teapot, the inside of it, and on the lid. Sometimes you'll also see a mark on the handle. For most of our teapots, a certificate of authenticity of the artist is included. We're often asked to identify a mark or our users are asking for a Modern Chinese Pottery marks list. The truth is there are tens of thousands of Yixing artists in China, and such a list simply doesn't exist.

Antique Yixing Teapots: How To Tell The Age?

We often receive emails in which the owner of a pot asks to identify the antique zisha teapot and estimate the age. The honest truth is, that it's very hard to estimate the age just based on pictures. What we can do it sell you whether or not they're well-made and high quality. If you're interested to hear our judgement on a pot you own, feel free to email us.

Yixing teapot museum & teapots history

Zisha was mined for the first time during the Song Dynasty, near the Tai Hu Lake. If you happen to be near Yixing, we highly recommend to visit the Yixing teapot museum to get to know more about the history.

 

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