Yixing Zisha Teapot
Yixing purple sand is a handmade pottery craft produced and developed in Yixing City, Jiangsu Province, most famous Chinese Tea Set. This new process to produce special ZiShaTu yixing as raw material, by hand to play, together with molding and to decorate and fire as a characteristic, handmade pottery making craft in the tradition of human for ten thousand years, at the same time and drinking tea, carving, calligraphy, painting, poetry, such as combination of traditional culture and art, make purple sand pottery art expression of China's rich traditional culture symbols and a carrier, It pushed the craft of handmade pottery to its peak in history.
Yixing, China's pottery capital, lies on the west bank of Taihu Lake at the southern tip of Jiangsu Province. Here is the center of the Yangtze River Delta, there are many tea gardens, excellent ecology, rich mineral resources, among which the pottery is the main, the pottery is also mixed with purple sand clay rare in other areas, for the birth and development of purple sand pottery laid a solid natural foundation. The mountains around Yixing are rich in trees, which provide high-quality fuel for pottery. The territory of numerous rivers, dense water network, can be navigable rivers up to more than 100, waterway transportation is convenient, yixing ceramic products export sales brought natural conditions.
Yixing handmade purple clay pottery is mainly spread in the historical and cultural town of Dingshu town and its nearby areas. Dingshu town is 14 kilometers away from the main urban area of Yixing city in the north, with an urban area of 5.3 square kilometers and an administrative area of 54.66 square kilometers, and a population of more than 80,000 people. Dingshu town has junshan and Chu Mountain in the south, Ivory Mountain and Tuanshan in the west, Qinglong Mountain and Huanglong Mountain in the north, Shushan in the northeast, dingshan and Taishan in the town, among which Huanglongshan is famous for the origin and excavation of high quality purple sand raw materials since ancient times.
Ding Shu town is also named after Ding Shan and Shu Shan in the town area. Due to specific materials and craftsmanship of ceramics forming system of long-term development accumulation, yixing purple sand pottery art by hand only distributed in the yixingshi dingshuzhen area, basic did not change until today, since the Ming and qing dynasties era cultural heritage distribution space clear, specifically about our east of shushan, west since crossing the white down, soup, white clay, on the south north to dive, yuen, within about 30 miles. In this space, pottery was produced almost everywhere in history, and every family made blanks.
Violet arenaceous technology products, especially with the Chinese tea culture symbiosis of yixing purple clay teapots spread wide, almost known to all over the provinces in China, area, especially in jiangsu, Shanghai, zhejiang, fujian, anhui, shandong, guangdong, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Beijing and other places, it is to the south of fujian province, Japanese Teapot chaoshan area the formation of "kongfu" played an important role. In addition, yixing purple sand pottery products in the Ming and Qing Dynasties have been exported to Japan, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Europe and other places, the influence is quite popular, europeans regarded as the world's most precious fine tea ware, not only called "red porcelain", and even imitation. Since modern times, purple sand tea sets with traditional craft characteristics have been exported to nearly 60 countries and regions around the world. In the fourth year of The Reign of Emperor Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty (1878), Takasu Lei jiang, a Japanese ceramic artist, invited Jin Shiheng and Wu Agen, purple clay artists from Yixing, to teach their art in Japan. Until today, the "zhu Ni ware" in Aichi Prefecture, Japan, or "Zhu Ni burning", "zi ni burning" and the "Wan gu purple sand ware" in Mie Prefecture are still the technological achievements formed and handed down under the influence of the purple sand pottery in Yixing, China.
Archaeologists have found that pottery industry began in Yixing about six to seven thousand years ago. From then on until the Song and Yuan dynasties, yixing's ceramic industry flourished. It was during the Song Dynasty, about 700 years ago, that zisha pottery was finally invented. This craft has continued the ancient tradition of human handwork, combined with the characteristics of the local purple sand clay in Yixing, according to the needs of people's life, endowed with artistic creation, and finally achieved a unique pottery craft.
Around the Ming Dynasty, zisha craft had appeared in specialized works. During the period of the Late Ming Dynasty, Zhou Gaoqi wrote Yang Xianming Pot System, which recorded many beautiful stories and characters about zisha pottery art. The zisha pottery of the Song Dynasty was mainly used for daily use, such as POTS and bowls. However, by the Ming Dynasty, zisha pottery had been combined with tea culture, making "Zisha pot" the most outstanding representative of zisha pottery.
