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@Victoria
I think it may have to do with the life span of the kettle. EOT had a custom zisha kettle that was made for heating. From what I know, some LQER larger pots have been put under fire to heat/re heat the tea. And then chaozhou kettle is known to use for heating water. So, if the pot is worth $5 that would last me 10 years, as a tea drinker, it’s worth it. On the other hand, the same pot may last for 100+ years with regular use of brewing tea.

DailyTX wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 23, 2021 2:04 pm

Victoria
I think it may have to do with the life span of the kettle. EOT had a custom zisha kettle that was made for heating. From what I know, some LQER larger pots have been put under fire to heat/re heat the tea. And then chaozhou kettle is known to use for heating water. So, if the pot is worth $5 that would last me 10 years, as a tea drinker, it’s worth it. On the other hand, the same pot may last for 100+ years with regular use of brewing tea.

Interesting concept, this is how I treat my thick ceramic Chinese herb cooker. I know that after 5-10 years cracks will form on the underside from use on gas stove and eventually I’ll need to replace for +-$40. Those herbs boil for 15-30 minutes and even using a diffuser that’s a lot of heat.

Thanks for all the replies. Very cool to find this stuff Just took it out of its last soak in bicarbonate and the smell is gone and it looks very nice. Will make a big pot of shu in it this weekend!

Chadrinkincat wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 23, 2021 1:23 pm

Rmt

I have one of these too.

What’s w/ the base seal on this pot? The characters are in an abnormal configuration.

Maybe the potter was dyslexic But good question...

@Rmt

I've got a lot of these big pots. They are very common in Germany. One of them has a handle like your pot and a very sloppy makers mark. You can find these pots in two sizes with two different handles. I don't know if all variations are genuine. Maybe, the age is different or they were exported to different countries.

Here I posted a photo of four of them:

viewtopic.php?p=21054#p21054

@Mark-S
Many Yixing potters in that era have minimal education, once they finished elementary school they needed to work to feed their family. It's common for them to have poor Chinese writing skills. For those sloppy chops we see on F1 yixing, I think potters did not care if the base chop was strong with alignment. How the chop was stamped is another form of authentication that differentiates works from a master.

The design/shape seems to have been popular. There were two other pots like this in the shop I got mine from with very similar designs, but none of them had chops. One of them was glazed and the other had a weird clay + looked like it was thrown on a wheel. The latter actually had a stamp on the bottom saying “made in France” underneath...

Rmt wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 24, 2021 11:50 am

The design/shape seems to have been popular. There were two other pots like this in the shop I got mine from with very similar designs, but none of them had chops. One of them was glazed and the other had a weird clay + looked like it was thrown on a wheel. The latter actually had a stamp on the bottom saying “made in France” underneath...

My Chinese teapot/kettles don’t have stamps and the water that is boiled in them tastes sweet.

I don't think this one is, but I've seen some in this style which I think might also actually be nixing. nixing produced in the 60s-80s so far from what I've been able to tell never had seal markings (at least not the standard factory made export stuff), just Made in China and or number/letter marks - @Rmt maybe that is what one of yours is.

oops well if it was made in France then... no.

@wave_code

Some 70's teapots also don't have marks at the bottom. I got at least 6 with no seal.

I did not know that the "Made in China" (not the green label sticker) teapots were Nixing teapots. Most of them are of very bad quality and often slip cast. Thanks for this information.

yeah from what I've been able to tell those are nixing. theres a few standard designs, most famous being the "Begonia" pot which is on the Duoteli yellow box. but its quite different from modern nixing - lighter color, more porous, I assume from probably lower firing and/or maybe the blend of the two clays was different or processed different then -tends to have a particular smell. and yes the workmanship is downright crude and bad on a lot of them. it seems like its sort of luck of the draw of getting ones that were better made and fired over others. its something I've been looking in to a bit, will get a big post up here eventually with info/personal findings.

@Mark-S 70s Yixing without seal chop? What kind of shapes?

That happened with some of the Biaozhun(standard) designs, but these are very rare... otherwise as far as I know, they always had one during that period.

Bok wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 24, 2021 7:06 pm

Mark-S 70s Yixing without seal chop? What kind of shapes?

Without a seal chop at the bottom. There is always one under the lid (at least that's true for my pots). For example:

A newly arrived tea set w/ same exact cups and plates as my other set. The shui ping of this one is of much better quality though. 朱泥 Seal on handle. Serious damage to lid which is a bummer but totally worth paying for pro repair. More pictures.....

I believe this one is LQER zhuni but I could be mistaken.

Chadrinkincat wrote: ↑

Mon Apr 26, 2021 8:26 pm

A newly arrived tea set w/ same exact cups and plates as my other set. The shui ping of this one is of much better quality though. 朱泥 Seal on handle. Serious damage to lid which is a bummer but totally worth paying for pro repair. More pictures.....

I believe this one is LQER zhuni but I could be mistaken.

Seal reads Fuji not Zhuni. I'd lean towards early ROC. Very nice pot! Lovely spout design. Makes all the difference to all the ugliness that happened afterwards...

To add: Fuji was a famous workshop, some of the founder generation of Yixing F1 worked there. The reason why F1 has Neiziwaihong and Neiwailinjiang is because Fuji was known for this method.

But as most things, they did it much better than F1.