faj wrote: ↑Sat Oct 19, 2019 6:56 am
Baisao wrote: ↑Fri Oct 18, 2019 10:40 pm
It will be hard to quantify this since it involves a sense for what is happening in an enclosed space but it seems to me like flat edges and angles create less refined (harsh or edgy) aromatics and shallow teapots don’t seem to gather the aromatics as well as more spherical teapots. This is my opinion after 15 years, more or less, of making tea in different shaped teapots.
As an engineer, my first reaction is to note that spherical shapes have a smaller surface to volume ratio, which would mean slower heat dissipation, and less exposure of tea to the surface effects of the clay. Angular shapes will also create temperature variations. Intuitively, those are factors that could, in theory, affect the result. But you also said smaller pots perform better, and they (compared to larger ones) will also have quicker heat dissipation and more surface exposed to tea per unit of volume. So heat retention might not be the main driver, as if it was I would expect you to recommend bigger teapots.
Flatter shapes would also have a higher surface of water exposed to air unless 100% full.
Obviously, smaller teapots allow an increased water to leaves ratio for a given amount (and cost) of leaves. In the world of headphones, it is said that preference sometimes come from slight differences in volume being mistaken for differences in quality : if one tends to use slightly more leaves per unit of water when using smaller pots, it might be perceived as the smaller pot infusing better tea. This is just an outsider's untested conjecture in front of a process with so many variables involved, I am not claiming that to be either true or plausible.
All of this is possible and I don’t think anyone has studied this scientifically. There are other aspects of tea that lack satisfactory explanations for which there is consensus among tea enthusiasts. Sometimes we describe these things using Eastern terms. Cha qi is one obvious example. The Western consensus is that cha qi is not a mystical force but a yet unexplained interaction of phytochemicals in the human body. Sometimes we accept the mystery and move on.
faj wrote: ↑Sat Oct 19, 2019 6:56 am
Baisao wrote: ↑Fri Oct 18, 2019 10:40 pm
Ultimately it comes down to “If it’s fake, it’s a really good one”. We evaluate from experience, of course, but we look at textures, inclusions/precipitates, firing, colors in various light sources, porosity, and affect on flavors/textures.
I understand it ends up being a judgement call, the hope being that one's own ability to detect fakes is higher that the scammer's ability and incentives to develop fakes good enough to beat your ability. In your case that might be a reasonable risk equation, in my own case it is another story.
As the price of vintage teaware increases, I would expect the ability of collectors to weed out fakes will grow slower than the scammer's ability to fake, as knowledge about what makes a pot "authentic" in a way that does not involve expensive testing is probably not growing much, while the increasing price of collectibles creates almost unbounded economic incentives (and therefore means) to develop better fakes. In other words, I would expect experts judging authenticity with the naked eye to be losing ground to scammers as time goes by, with an increasing flow of fake passing as real stuff among knowledgeable individuals.
I am surprised that there does not seem to be any third party doing tests on products and auditing supply chains. Given the high value of teapots, the value of certainty as to clay quality is high, and doing chemical and spectrometric tests cannot be that expensive. Credible third party certification would give a lot of pricing power to vendors of modern products, I would expect. But then again, it really is not a market I know about.
As mentioned since the above post, there are efforts to test Yixing clays. I don’t think this will get too far as none of these clays are pure. They are (historically) personally processed mixtures of clays from various locations and strata around the region. For example, when we talk about zhuni some people assume it is a pure clay and can only come from a couple of locations, but even lao zhuni had to be blended with hongni to be workable, and who knows where either clay came from when examining the finished teapot.
Your assumption that fakers are ahead of collector is correct. But it is worse than that. Pressure from fakers has caused collectors to only accept as authentic teapots of highly specific characteristics. This creates a climate where authentic teapots are considered fake, even if there is archeological evidence (shipwrecks, etc.) for the contentious characteristics. As you can imagine, this creates a kind of echo chamber where collectors are experts only on a slice of the historical production and everything else is suspect.
I have known experts who passed on fakes despite their good intentions. They no longer sell. So yes, it happens. My own teacher, despite being an expert at gongfu cha, frequently bought handmade teapots that had clearly been made in a mold. I literally couldn’t make my teacher see the seam lines because the dream was stronger than the reality!
faj wrote: ↑Sat Oct 19, 2019 6:56 am
Baisao wrote: ↑Fri Oct 18, 2019 10:40 pm
It’s worth noting that F1 teapots are a benchmark for many of us since they are so well documented.
If I were to assume that documentation would not be in English, would I be right?
Ah, well this is the caveat that makes F1’s much safer. The world’s expert on early F1 teapots has a pictorial book. It’s in Chinese but easily translated with an app as you go. He speaks English and has a Facebook site where he helps people verify their teapots. It’s doesn’t get much better than that.