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Interesting - this is something I had actually wondered about myself. I always figured early factory but also so many Qing and ROC pots I've seen show none of the characteristic of contemporary "wood firing" like the uneven ash glazing despite the fact that they must have been made in dragon kilns. ...

Interesting @ Bok I've been making my recent project figuring out a way to get off the bottled water as much as possible. Though while learning about reverse osmosis you find it also can produce quite a substantial amount of it if you don't have a decently efficient system set up. It can at least be...

The way the blue line work is done it does feel more Chinese to me, and the pattern too, but my experience with Japanese ceramics, particularly older ones is very limited. I've seen these described as 'straw bale' pattern or something similar about straw before but that may mean absolutely nothing. ...

Anyone have any ideas on these location or time period wise? I had assumed they are Japanese, although I had one Arita dealer tell me he was positive it wasn't Arita ware and didn't even think it was Japanese. It's very different from any Chinese vintage stuff I have or am familiar with though so I ...

Victoria I think we have a bot here... one that seems to have included what their profile they are playing is supposed to be as their actual profile :lol: ... Interests:Certainly! I share your love for tea and reading books. There's something very special about enjoying a warm cup of tea while gett...

nice pot chillian12 - I feel like I always see that mogake effect on grey or light colored clays and it never really worked for me - but over a deep red clay like I think it looks fantastic. Speaking of Hokujo and son... They are making their own clay blend, correct? Are they both using the same cla...

In fairness to the bot's abilities, Hojo's style of processing and storage for certain teas does seem unique enough to warrant the name almost - Hojo's pu isn't exactly like other vendors from what I have heard.

Endless downpours here today... A good excuse to stay in the apartment and test a new pot... Using this Bizen teapot to brew up a dry stored sheng. I'm guessing the clay itself might actually be tokoname given how much clay actually comes from there... Thanks to Baisao for the seal help... Bizen mar...

I hadn't considered it but it makes total sense to produce higher compression and smokier tea if its intended storage and export was to more humid areas for storage. The dry/kunming stored XG I have had (granted usually lower quality productions) didn't seem to have any favors done for it under thos...

While there are plenty of others made, at least for me the first thing I associate with tuo tea is always Xiaguan. There is the Jia ji, teji, jia, xiao fa, 503, jin si... plus all the special pressings that are maybe made only once or are produced in more recent years of special grades, region tribu...

Had a low leaf lazy trial brew of Ying Kee tuo I picked up out of curiosity and was somewhat pleasantly surprised. No traditional HK storage notes, this being the first pu of theirs I have tried I don't know if wetter HK style is typical for them or not... but for a tuo I felt it broke apart surpris...

interesting you bring up the extraction and pour issues with hei cha Baisao . generally they are considered such forgiving teas, and while generally this is still true over time I did notice more and more this problem, especially once I started using higher tds water for them which extracts more fro...

I also go intuitive having tried side by side direct comparisons only a couple of times for actual brewing - the tastebuds get muddled so quickly anyway doing that I don't know if I would actually trust a more methodical result for myself. I've done side by side overnight plain water tests quite a f...

cheers Bok - always happy to share findings like this. I think even when we say to others experiment and find out for yourself and trust your taste it is still really easy to fall in to assumptions about what clay works well with what. though as in at least once of the cases above we see this also o...

Curiosity got the better of me and I picked up a kobiwako pot and thought why not give it a real thorough run-down with my long weekend. Right from the get go I will say this clay is gorgeous - I love all the coarse visible colorations in the clay and it has a very nice texture. I'm really curious h...