秋 水
Yixing Zisha Teapot · Hong Jiangpo Clay · Min Guanlin · 2023
A pot of a hundred and seventy millilitres, standing taller than it is wide, walled so thin that filled with nothing it weighs a hundred and thirty-nine grams. It is named for the seventeenth chapter of the Zhuangzi.
In that chapter the autumn floods come, every stream pours into the Yellow River, and the river swells until its banks are so far apart that a horse cannot be told from a cow across the water. The River Earl looks at what he has become and is delighted with himself. Then he travels east, reaches the sea, and stops speaking.
The chapter ends on a bridge over the Hao, where two philosophers argue about whether one can know that fish are happy. Nothing is settled. That is the point. A pot carrying this name is not making a claim about itself; it is declining to.
Small, upright, high-shouldered, on a foot of 5.4 centimetres. The proportions run vertical rather than broad — 8.75 centimetres tall against a belly of 8.1 — which gives the silhouette its lift and keeps the leaf bed deep and narrow. A 4.4-centimetre mouth admits a hand for cleaning without breaking the line of the shoulder.
The weight is worth dwelling on. One hundred and thirty-nine grams for a hundred and seventy millilitre capacity is thin work. Thin walls in jiangpo clay are difficult and unforgiving: the body is sandy, short and slightly crumbly to throw, and it does not tolerate a heavy hand. Whatever else can or cannot be said about this pot, the walls are evidence of a maker who knew the material.
Hong jiangpo (红降坡) — “red slope-cut clay.” The name records an accident. In the early 1990s Yixing built the Taodu Road between Huanglongshan and Qinglongshan; the gradient was too steep, so engineers cut the slope down, and in cutting it they went straight through zisha ore nobody had known was there. The clay took its name from the roadworks. It is the only Yixing clay named not for its colour, its seam or its owner, but for the circumstance of its discovery.
The ore occurs in scattered lenses rather than a continuous seam, which makes it comparatively uncommon — though not, in honesty, the treasure that some sellers claim. This example is described as coming from the Baoshan sector of Huanglongshan, an old and historically productive working that local potters call the Dragon’s Head.
Fired, the red variant reads orange-red shot through with yellow sand: a pear-skin surface in which individual grains stand slightly proud and catch the light. It is a clay that changes visibly with use, the yellow warming and the red deepening over months of tea.
Signed Min Guanlin (闵冠霖) and dated on the body to the guimao year (癸卯). Given the pot’s known history this places it in 2023. A certificate bearing the maker’s signature accompanies the pot.
The seller was unable to locate this maker in the published registers of the Yixing personnel bureau, which list some nine thousand registered ceramicists. No professional title or grade is claimed here, and none should be inferred. Many working potters of real ability appear in no register at all. The pot is offered on the evidence of the pot: the thinness of the wall, the fit of the lid, the cut of the spout.
| Height | 8.75 cm |
|---|---|
| Length | 10.5 cm |
| Belly diameter | 8.1 cm |
| Mouth diameter | 4.4 cm |
| Foot diameter | 5.4 cm |
| Weight | 139 g |
| Capacity | 170 ml |
| Clay | Hong jiangpo 红降坡, Baoshan sector, Huanglongshan |
| Maker | Min Guanlin 闵冠霖, Yixing |
| Dated | Guimao 癸卯 — 2023 |
Jiangpo clay is high in fluxes. This is what gives it that liquid, moist-looking surface after seasoning — and it is also why the fired body is more brittle than ordinary zisha. Pots in this clay chip more readily at the rim and spout, and are more susceptible to thermal shock than a purple-clay pot of the same wall thickness.
In practice: warm the pot before the first pour rather than filling a cold pot with boiling water; keep it away from hard edges; rinse with hot water only, never detergent; let it dry fully between sessions. Treated with ordinary attention it will last generations. Treated carelessly it is the one clay that will punish you for it.
It suits sheng puerh, aged oolong, roasted Wuyi and black tea. At 170 ml it is sized for gongfu brewing, not for the table.
Shipped from Vienna · packed with care · tracked