Tin pots

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Balthazar
Posts: 706
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2018 7:04 am
Location: Oslo, Norway

Wed Jul 14, 2021 12:39 pm

So I recently came across a brief essay by Zhang Dai, that delightful Ming essayist/historian/hedonist. I’m not gonna make an attempt at an awful translation of classical Chinese. Maybe someone else wants to take a stab.
宜兴罐,以龚春为上,时大彬次之,陈用卿又次之。锡注,以王元吉为上,归懋德次之。夫砂罐,砂也;锡注,锡也。器方脱手,而一罐一注价五六金,则是砂与锡与价,其轻重正相等焉,岂非怪事!一砂罐、一锡注,直跻之商彝、周鼎之列而毫无惭色,则是其品地也。
In any case, it reminded me that tin pots are (and were) a thing. He mentions 王元吉 (which I read should probably be 黄元吉) and 懋德 as the finest contemporary tin craftsmen.

Image
(This set is from the Qing dynasty)

A couple of days ago I saw this video from “Seokbo Tea Institute”, which recommends tin or silver for brewing qianliangcha.

I’ve been curious about silver pots for a long time, but hadn’t thought about tin (or pewter). Does anyone has experience with the latter? Searching around, the benefits attributed to tin seems to be same as silver (very good heat retention, slight sweetening of the water), so, in terms of brewing, is tin just the poor man’s silver?

And speaking of “the poor man”, the tin pots I’ve seen are anything but cheap. They can be pretty darned expensive, or a bit but not that much cheaper than similar silver offerings.
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wave_code
Posts: 575
Joined: Wed Nov 21, 2018 2:10 pm
Location: Germany

Fri Jul 23, 2021 4:12 am

I've never used a tin pot before, so I'm no help there. I did notice the other day though that the copper pots Hojo sells are tin lined - still not on the super cheap side, but well below the cost of a silver pot if one was keen to try it out. the ones you posted with the rattan wrapping are super nice looking, I like their design more than most silver pots I've seen
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Balthazar
Posts: 706
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2018 7:04 am
Location: Oslo, Norway

Fri Jul 23, 2021 6:09 am

Thanks for the tip, those Hojo pots look nice! Another "budget" tin option is this Malaysian one (97% tin), from Xifu. Not much of a looker, but I prefer its simplicity to the similarly priced JD.com/Taobao options.

Not curious enough to go for one just yet though.
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wave_code
Posts: 575
Joined: Wed Nov 21, 2018 2:10 pm
Location: Germany

Sat Jul 24, 2021 4:30 am

I do quite like the shape of that one, and certainly more wallet friendly.

Maybe not quite as reliable, but there is always vintage- I doubt any of the stuff going up is old enough that you could risk it still having lead... this antique vendor puts up a fair amount of tin/pewter stuff if you keep an eye out... mostly chataku but recently some tin trays, and also some tin pots are up right now- the really long spout ones that from what I understand are meant for sake. No reason they couldn't be tried for tea though, but I'm also bad at how to determine metals, maybe they are just aluminum? They have even recently had some pots up that I suspect were not 100% silver but had silver markings from a known manufacturer on the bottom, so maybe tin with silver lining - https://www.ebay.com/usr/tomoidak
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