Jingdezhen sourcing

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aet
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Sun Nov 30, 2025 10:20 pm

There it is. Feel free share any thoughts.
The long story short - It wasn't the really successful souring trip.
https://www.pageoftea.com/jingdezhen
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Victoria
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Mon Dec 01, 2025 1:06 am

Very generous and entertaining article as well as informative. A pleasure to read. Thank You 🍂 Also, explains why tea curation and sourcing deserves a mark up -it’s a lot of work.
GaoShan
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Mon Dec 01, 2025 5:42 am

I enjoy reading about your sourcing trips. I found it interesting that the sellers charge such high prices, meaning that tea vendors must charge even more. This makes it hard to distinguish between an authentic Jingdezhen piece with a high price and a cheaper piece the vendor bought on Taobao and marked up. This seems like a field, like Yixing pottery, where the customer needs to be more informed than they're likely to be. You almost need to be an insider to make good buying decisions.
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Bok
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Tue Dec 02, 2025 1:10 am

Recommended reading as always. Now think what the really cheap Taobao stuff must be made of... It is no small feat to source decent teaware. An yes @GaoShan tea is even worse... but @aet has some decent write ups on that as well! Always worth exploring his unfiltered, honest to death-truths about the tea industry :lol:
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aet
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Tue Dec 02, 2025 8:37 pm

Generally price of fully handmade gaiwan made by "no name" master starts something around 1000¥ ( 140$ ) and it's just simple rivers, mountains etc. something what "everybody" can do. Probably finding some students from art school and ask some project cooperation would make a sense. That would require spend more time there and so the money, therefore would be probably feasible if doing a large amount with risk that output is not the way you wanted. The gaiwan with people in that small shop was for around 2000¥ ( sold as full hand ) and it was half handmade obviously. He has also cups with exactly the same design and only brush stroke ends might reveal the difference, yet, the distances between man and door, or tree branches , or other details are quite similar. So it's obvious that brush was following the printed line and only few differences were made it make it look full job. And that's the thing. If you don't have 2 pieces side by side , you hardly would find out if full or half hand. Of course they tell you it's full hand made and in some cases they are not "lying" as they were told by master : " I painted it my self " so they work with this information as selling content without knowing how the master actually painted it. I believe that not trained eye wouldn't spot the machine printed from hand painted and the price between those two is enormous. So yes, that creates the opportunity for "the business". And then , of course , the antique stuff. I was tempted to buy some cup for my self at the beginning, but after seeing what and how it's cooked inside of the building complex, changed my mind.
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