Looks like no one here has great information about realzisha. Guess most people here are focused on clay purity or older/vintage and have less information about modern Yixing, so it makes sense. I'll provide some of my thoughts and experiences (also apologies for the necro in advance; just wanted to share information for any future readers here). Bottom line is they're very connected in the Yixing world and quite trustworthy (at least as far as vendors go; you can never be too sure), but their website is horrible to navigate.
To elaborate, the two main people running the business (Ian and Yi Lei/Jeff) are connected with the Cao (曹) family, headed by Cao Yalin (曹亚麟), one of the grandmaster craftsmen in China (highest achievable rank). Because of this prestige, they are able to source clay and manpower from just about anywhere and have insider information on many things, i.e. they know ahead of time when the national association wants to rank up one of the craftsmen they are affiliated with. This also means they have more information about the modern Yixing market, and have shared some of it on their site. Things like cost estimates, for example, have been a little high but overall lined up with many other Chinese sources.
However, it is true that they seemed very aggressive (and probably still are, to some extent) about the integrity of their teapots, the prestige of their artists, and how everyone else is selling fakes. My two cents on the matter is it's probably half good intention and half a marketing tactic. To my knowledge, there are no other western facing vendors that focus on fully handmade and higher end modern Yixing. In China for example, if you want to request a high end work you either need to be connected to an artist/family or contact a middleman with connections (high ranked artists are not to be bothered by random people). Realzisha acts as the middleman and provides this kind of service to the western world, with no real competition. But they had to distinguish themselves from the rest of the half handmade (mostly mass produced) market, which they did with perhaps too much aggression. In the end, I guess it worked for them as they seem to be the most popular (if not only) western facing option for getting higher end modern Yixing.
My experience with them has mostly been requesting a commission for a square teapot (surprisingly difficult to make if you didn't know), which is still in the works. I can't attest to the quality of their lower ranked everyday craftsmen, but I'm guessing they have cycled through a decent number and found those that are willing to work under their standards. The craftsmen could always earn more money working in a teapot factory after all.
Baiyun wrote: ↑Wed Sep 27, 2023 10:43 pm
This was from them, operating out of Singapore:
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2527
I am not yet sure about the nature of that defect, as per that thread.
They have fast and friendly communication and the return process was without friction, however, I also noticed that they removed the listing while I was in the process of complaining/returning it (to protect themselves from a bad review?), and I saw that they put it back up for sale right away after I had returned it (not caring that someone else gets a defective pot?).
Can't say much about this without seeing more of the teapot, but if any part of it is zhuni then I highly doubt it's not entirely zhuni. Xiaomeiyao zhuni is known to have a very high shrinkage rate (30% or more), and most of the teapots produced by realzisha with this clay are on the smaller end (<150ml) because of this. So even if coated it would be very hard for the rest of the pot to shrink at the same rate as the coating and not crack. But it is also known that xiaomeiyao zhuni is very sticky. It was actually mixed with other zini or QSN in the past to make them more cohesive. So if the pot was not properly dried or got wet somehow, the clay would still be very sticky and parts could stick to other things and come off, as shown in your picture. The difference in color could also be explained in a few ways: The original color of the clay before being fired/when fired less is actually lighter (which is the case for dahongpao), they may do an extra but short firing at a higher temperature or just torch the surface to get the outside to have a nice almost crimson color, etc.
But even with all these rationalizations, given how long ago this was (2022ish) I wouldn't be surprised if one the of craftsmen was being unethical and subsequently got cut off. Realzisha has done a lot of work to improve their product quality the last few years (taking way too many pictures, multiple layers of authentication, video calls with craftspeople, etc.), as they are still trying to build/maintain a good reputation (despite some somewhat questionable practices which I won't mention here).
