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2 chouzhou friends came to play over the Labour Day weekend...

@OCTO nice friends came over!

@OCTO
Looks like a lovely texture of the clay on these pots. New or old?

.m. wrote: ↑

Sat May 02, 2020 4:42 pm

OCTO
Looks like a lovely texture of the clay on these pots. New or old?

It's old....

Kind of of a crossover “Chaozhou/what oolong are you drinking”, my latest teapot from the Chao mountains having some lovely Dancong. Hard to beat the combination...

I have a CZ pot that I got from Tea Habitat ages ago when I drank dancong. I don't drink much dancong anymore, and I remember that the pot did well with young sheng puerh. Do you think that it'd do with "teenager" sheng that brews up orangish (5-10 years in dry storage)? Trying to work with what I have before getting more teapots.

maitre_tea wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 04, 2020 10:00 pm

I have a CZ pot that I got from Tea Habitat ages ago when I drank dancong. I don't drink much dancong anymore, and I remember that the pot did well with young sheng puerh. Do you think that it'd do with "teenager" sheng that brews up orangish (5-10 years in dry storage)? Trying to work with what I have before getting more teapots.

@maitre_tea

I don't see any reason why not! Give it a try and let us know your findings... I have one ChouZhou pot that is solely dedicated to Sheng Puerh.., both young and aged. I also have another CZ pot that is dedicated to YanCha, specifically mid fired DaHongPao.

My take..... give it a try! The result may surprise you!

Cheers!!

Finally... crossed one long searched for item off my list: Biandeng in Chaozhou shape. Notoriously difficult to date, this one is somewhere in the 70s.

Can anyone confirm the authenticity of the DaHongPao Chaozhou clay from BitterLeafTeas? It doesn't seem to match the descriptions on this thread. It is dark red (supposedly from aging) rather than orangey red. I'm not sure if it's true Chaozhou clay that has been aged, or clay from another source, or mixed/doped.

I'm curious if it would be a good choice for a modern Chaozhou pot for dan cong.

Griselbrand wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 03, 2020 10:02 pm

Can anyone confirm the authenticity of the DaHongPao Chaozhou clay from BitterLeafTeas? It doesn't seem to match the descriptions on this thread. It is dark red (supposedly from aging) rather than orangey red. I'm not sure if it's true Chaozhou clay that has been aged, or clay from another source, or mixed/doped.

I'm curious if it would be a good choice for a modern Chaozhou pot for dan cong.

@Griselbrand

Welcome to TeaForum.... Kindly tell us more about yourself in our Introduction thread viewtopic.php?f=2&p=29449#p29449 so that we could get to know you better.

Cheers!!

Griselbrand wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 03, 2020 10:02 pm

Can anyone confirm the authenticity of the DaHongPao Chaozhou clay from BitterLeafTeas? It doesn't seem to match the descriptions on this thread. It is dark red (supposedly from aging) rather than orangey red. I'm not sure if it's true Chaozhou clay that has been aged, or clay from another source, or mixed/doped.

I'm curious if it would be a good choice for a modern Chaozhou pot for dan cong.

I would also be interested in confirmation on this topic. I do love my teapot that I bought from BLT but it's just a standard pot. I have seen some lovely CZ and other pots but haven't gone for them since I didn't know the authenticity!

teabooksart wrote: ↑

Mon Nov 16, 2020 10:53 am

Griselbrand wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 03, 2020 10:02 pm

Can anyone confirm the authenticity of the DaHongPao Chaozhou clay from BitterLeafTeas? It doesn't seem to match the descriptions on this thread. It is dark red (supposedly from aging) rather than orangey red. I'm not sure if it's true Chaozhou clay that has been aged, or clay from another source, or mixed/doped.

I'm curious if it would be a good choice for a modern Chaozhou pot for dan cong.

I would also be interested in confirmation on this topic. I do love my teapot that I bought from BLT but it's just a standard pot. I have seen some lovely CZ and other pots but haven't gone for them since I didn't know the authenticity!

I only know of one (sort of) confirmed source for authentic CZ clay(zoey for tea).

Natural Chaozhou clay is more orangey and lighter in colour than dark red. The dark red ones are mostly vintage or antiques who have a dark red coating, but the inside is still orange.

Chaozhou clay seems to have become quite rare, so it’s safe to assume that in the absence of proof, it’s not.

A potter friend of mine went to Chaoshan to do an exchange with a local potter. Asked him to do a demo of his style. Afterwards all the clay drips were meticulously scooped up, not to mention they did not let him take one bit of clay away... tells you everything about how precious it must be for them.

That also explains some of the miss matching properties attributed to Chaozhou teapots by some people like the wonderful Meileaf

They probably simply didn’t use teapots made of CZ clay

Mind you, can still be made in CZ by a CZ potter, but of clay from other sources.

For the sake of comparison, here's a modern pot by Chen Zhijian i've aquired through Zoey. Lovely clay and meticulous craftsmanship. As you can see even through the bad color balance the clay here is more red than orange (second pic shows it next to white label hongni). There are probably different natural sources of Chaozhou clay of different quality (e.g. the clay used in cheap kettles is obviously not the same grade as this one), and the higher grade is probably quite scarce as @Bok said. I suspect that some of the color differences might do also with firing temperature.

trying to get better at using the new phone camera, so as an excuse here is my single lonely Chaozhou cup. Or at least I think it is cz- looks wheel thrown, the color changes quite a bit in the light but its very orange and smooth and quite small, only holding around 10ml so seems fitting.