Vintage nixing pots

[pathlesstaken]

Does anyone have any speculation regarding the intended brewing for the early Nixing pots?

The flyer in Huctan's blogpost on Nixing pots appears to show a tin of Jasmine tea next to a Nixing gold coin set, which feels like an odd decision for a clay teapot.

My Begonia pot set has 4 cups, each 15ml, but the pot itself has a capacity of 100ml. Do you think they may have intended for the pots to be totally, utterly stuffed, such as for high-ratio Chaozhou brewing or is it, perhaps, just an oversight? The gold coin set in the linked blogpost also has a Chaozhou-styled drainage tray.

[Bok]

I think most likely it was aimed at China mass market teas – like pictured Jasmine tea or any other default green tea. Those make up the largest part of the tea market in China. I don't think good combination with clay or taste was a consideration – the simple answer is: Chinese dislike to drink plain, ambient water. Needs to be hot and with some sort of excuse of a fragrance. These Nixing were never aimed at tea connoisseurs, just simple daily tools for the masses.

[pathlesstaken]

I think most likely it was aimed at China mass market teas – like pictured Jasmine tea or any other default green tea. Those make up the largest part of the tea market in China. I don't think good combination with clay or taste was a consideration – the simple answer is: Chinese dislike to drink plain, ambient water. Needs to be hot and with some sort of excuse of a fragrance. These Nixing were never aimed at tea connoisseurs, just simple daily tools for the masses.

Though, how many daily green tea drinkers would bother with a small teapot, cups and gong-fu drainage tray, when they already have a workable cup or mug, or other Nixing mugs available also?

[DailyTX]

Tea pairing was not heavily focused on in the past, and Chinese teawares like Yixing and chaozhou were mostly utilitarian wares. I heard from old HK tea drinkers who received free teawares from buying teas from tea shops. Qinzhou started massively producing nixing wares when Yixing teawares were blooming in the 1970s. Due to its crude construction, it’s often seen as inferior to yixing. Most of those tea sets with good consistent color were made for export to South East Asia and European market

[pathlesstaken]

Tea pairing was not heavily focused on in the past, and Chinese teawares like Yixing and chaozhou were mostly utilitarian wares. I heard from old HK tea drinkers who received free teawares from buying teas from tea shops. Qinzhou started massively producing nixing wares when Yixing teawares were blooming in the 1970s. Due to its crude construction, it’s often seen as inferior to yixing. Most of those tea sets with good consistent color were made for export to South East Asia and European market

I'm not talking about tea-clay pairing, but functionality.

[DailyTX]

I'm not talking about tea-clay pairing, but functionality.

My guess is functionality was intended to mirror Yixing and chaozhou wares per market demanded at the time.

[wave_code]

I recently came into a Nixing 4 cup set, with a Begonia pot and a caddy. I believe this set to be unused, given the pot still had clay dust inside. While I was doing an initial boiling rinse, a bit of hot water spilled out onto the polished surface, and left a rough to the touch surface. I've attached a picture of this on the cups in the set. You can see the left is much grittier. This can be removed by lightly rubbing the surface with a towel, and doesn't reoccur with re-exposure to hot water. Does anyone know what this might be?

wax or some sort of similar coating. most nixing pots I get never saw use before and I have found frequently have this kind of coating- they look worse after an initial cleaning, but hit them with hot water and scrub them with a stiff natural hair brush like one for cleaning potatoes and it tends to take it off

as for the make of the pots, I think most if not at least a lot of nixing pots were actually made in much larger sizes- smaller ones are less common, very small ones are rare in my experience. I only have one earlier make pot that is under 100ml size. I imagine the idea was to compete for a spot in the more gong-fu size marketplace with the smaller pots and these sets, but I imagine that both the nature of the clay and the mass manufacturing process just didn't make it possible to mass produce 50-100ml size pots well. one aspect of this I have been curious about but never found much info on though was nixing pots make or usage locally before mass manufacturing and if this happened much if at all for teaware or if it was really only used for things like vases or other vessels before. I haven't seen for example Qing or ROC nixing pot examples.

[pathlesstaken]

I recently came into a Nixing 4 cup set, with a Begonia pot and a caddy. I believe this set to be unused, given the pot still had clay dust inside. While I was doing an initial boiling rinse, a bit of hot water spilled out onto the polished surface, and left a rough to the touch surface. I've attached a picture of this on the cups in the set. You can see the left is much grittier. This can be removed by lightly rubbing the surface with a towel, and doesn't reoccur with re-exposure to hot water. Does anyone know what this might be?

wax or some sort of similar coating. most nixing pots I get never saw use before and I have found frequently have this kind of coating- they look worse after an initial cleaning, but hit them with hot water and scrub them with a stiff natural hair brush like one for cleaning potatoes and it tends to take it off

as for the make of the pots, I think most if not at least a lot of nixing pots were actually made in much larger sizes- smaller ones are less common, very small ones are rare in my experience. I only have one earlier make pot that is under 100ml size. I imagine the idea was to compete for a spot in the more gong-fu size marketplace with the smaller pots and these sets, but I imagine that both the nature of the clay and the mass manufacturing process just didn't make it possible to mass produce 50-100ml size pots well. one aspect of this I have been curious about but never found much info on though was nixing pots make or usage locally before mass manufacturing and if this happened much if at all for teaware or if it was really only used for things like vases or other vessels before. I haven't seen for example Qing or ROC nixing pot examples.

What I have heard is that Qinzhou tea pottery only started in the 50s, so that would put ROC and Qing out of the question. Though, English language sources on Nixing are somewhat rare. I found this example of a Qing vase on Bonham's:

[DailyTX]

Similar to Yixing. Factory period started in the 1950-1960s. Here is a link with other uncommon designs for various markets often mislabel as Yixing wares.

https://kknews.cc/collect/28oomve.html

[pathlesstaken]

Similar to Yixing. Factory period started in the 1950-1960s. Here is a link with other uncommon designs for various markets often mislabel as Yixing wares.

https://kknews.cc/collect/28oomve.html

But, Yixing was making teaware before Factory 1. Those are all Factory designs for Nixing, no? Not Qing or ROC.

[DailyTX]

Similar to Yixing. Factory period started in the 1950-1960s. Here is a link with other uncommon designs for various markets often mislabel as Yixing wares.

https://kknews.cc/collect/28oomve.html

But, Yixing was making teaware before Factory 1. Those are all Factory designs for Nixing, no? Not Qing or ROC.

Those were factory and after period. QinZhou pottery has existed for a long time. I think QinZhou potters were making vessels prior to the factory period. Like vessels to hold water and vases.

[wave_code]

earliest pot as far as I can guess that I have, and also the smallest, though I have two others which might be similar time or earlier but have artist rather than factory seals which I am still trying to date. hold around 75ml though usable volume is even slightly under if you don't want it to dribble or don't want to pour slowly

[pathlesstaken]

earliest pot as far as I can guess that I have, and also the smallest, though I have two others which might be similar time or earlier but have artist rather than factory seals which I am still trying to date. hold around 75ml though usable volume is even slightly under if you don't want it to dribble or don't want to pour slowly

Wow, love the shape on that one. Do you have more pics? Looks to be somewhat unpolished, and the clay seems to have less visible blending?

[wave_code]

Daylight here this time of year isn't fantastic but here are a couple more. By far the thinnest spout of any of my nixing pots. I still haven't been able to figure if this one is mold made or wheel thrown or some combo - finished on a wheel maybe? The inside has a lot more rings and that little center spot that looks more wheel thrown to me, but a lot of my nixing pots have these similar deep carving lines like this one also has. Also the way the top and bottom of the body join feels like either where someone wasn't so smooth on the wheel or where two halves were joined. Single hole spout on this one

It does have more evident tiger striping effect on it than most of my other older nixing pots do. There is a pretty wide variety of coloration and clay effects with these earlier pots but most aren't so common. But even between factory batches I have some which are much darker than others, some pots that are more reddish in color, then there are the special clay batches... I don't have any but I know a small number of all off-white pots were also produced, I am guessing it was made using only one of the two typical clays or a very different blend. My guess was it was an attempt to imitate a look like duan ni or to appeal to porcelain collectors, but the clay apparently does not make good tea from what I have been told.