Chen Ju Fang is a Yixing potter, born in 1964, who works at the Wu Xing Shan Fang studio in Yixing with her husband, Zhou Qi Kun. She is known for plain, sturdy pots in the classical shapes and for bamboo-form pots. Many of the modern Yixing pots in our range are made by her or by apprentices at the same studio.
Who is Chen Ju Fang?
Chen Ju Fang is a zisha potter from Yixing who makes classical pots at the Wu Xing Shan Fang studio. She was born in 1964 and grew up in Yixing, where almost every family had some connection to teapot making. She and Zhou Qi Kun were classmates as children and married later.
She specialises in two kinds of pot: guang hu, the plain, smooth classical forms, and zhu hu, pots modelled on bamboo. She is a member of the Chinese Arts and Crafts Society, and she and her husband both belong to the Jiangsu Province Zisha Ceramics Arts and Crafts Society, which runs meetings and research for Yixing potters.
Her pots are made for use. They have solid walls, even proportions and spouts that pour cleanly. Nothing about them is showy, which is the point of the style she works in.
What are guang hu and zhu hu pots?
Guang hu are plain pots: smooth, undecorated round or geometric forms such as the Shui Ping, Si Ting, Duo Qiu and Ju Lun Zhu. Zhu hu are bamboo pots, with bodies, spouts and handles shaped like bamboo sections and joints.
Plain pots are harder to make well than they look. With no carving or decoration, every line is on show. A lid that sits slightly off, a spout at the wrong angle or a handle that does not balance the body is obvious at once. The classical guang hu shapes have been refined over centuries, and a good one looks simple because the proportions are right.
They are also good pots for tea. A plain interior is easy to clean, easy to judge and easy to pour from. The shapes most used for gongfu tea are almost all guang hu.
Who is Zhou Qi Kun?
Zhou Qi Kun is Chen Ju Fang's husband and the senior potter at Wu Xing Shan Fang. He was born in 1963 in Zhao Zhuang village, Yixing. He trained under Yang Qing Fang, one of the ten grandmasters of Yixing, and became his top student.
He came to pottery late. He worked as a carpenter for some years, then went to school to study Yixing history and the chemistry of clay and firing before his apprenticeship. That mix still shows in his work. He has spent more than twenty years studying Ming and Qing pots, not only for their shapes but for how their clay affects tea, and he researches ore processing, pot making and firing with brewing as the test.
He is also known for inlaying gold into the surface of his pots in small points, a style often called starry sky. His own pieces sit at the top of the studio's range.
What is the Wu Xing Shan Fang studio?
Wu Xing Shan Fang is the pottery studio in Yixing where Zhou Qi Kun, Chen Ju Fang and their students work. It produces pots on a sliding scale of price and skill, from student pieces to the masters' own work, so the same clay and shapes are available at several levels.
The studio processes its own clay from ore. The ore is ground and refined by traditional methods, then aged in damp cellars before use, and the studio spent years testing its clay processing against the effect on tea. That is the basis of the pure aged zini our modern pots are made from. For more on the clay itself, read zini, hongni, zhuni and duanni explained.
Most Yixing workshops now specialise: one mines, another refines clay, another makes moulds, another makes pots, another fires them. A studio that follows the clay from ore to finished pot is less common.
What do "Chen Ju Fang" and "Apprentice" mean on our listings?
We work with the Wu Xing Shan Fang studio's pots, and each listing in our range names who made the pot, usually Chen Ju Fang or an apprentice at the studio. The clay grade, Bronze to Diamond, is listed separately. A pot by Chen Ju Fang can still be Bronze grade.
Apprentice pots are made by students at the studio. That is how nearly every Yixing potter learns: students work under a master for years, making the standard shapes over and over, before they build their own pots fully by hand. Apprentice pots cost less because the maker has less experience. The clay grade tells you about the clay.
If the maker or the construction method of a specific pot matters to you, ask us before you buy. We will tell you what we know.
Does a Chen Ju Fang seal prove a pot is hers?
No seal proves that on its own. Seals are easy to copy, and across Yixing, workshops routinely sell pots made by one person under the seal of a better-known name. The more a name is worth, the more likely it is to be faked.
What protects you is a seller who can say where a pot came from. A pot bought from a stranger online with a well-known name on the base is a gamble, whoever the name belongs to. We explain how seals work, and what they can and cannot tell you, in what does the seal on the bottom of a Yixing teapot mean?
Which Chen Ju Fang pot should you start with?
For a first pot, a Bronze-grade zini pot of 100 to 150ml in a plain classical shape. It will brew most teas well and teach you what the clay does. Move up in grade or into red clay once you know what you drink.
- Si Ting 145ml, Bronze grade: a classic pear shape with a long spout that gives good control of the pour. A sound all-rounder for one or two people.
- Hong Pi Long Xiao Ying Hu 195ml: red Zhao Zhuang clay, round-bellied and big enough for three, for fragrant oolongs.
- Ju Lun Zhu 120ml, Diamond grade: the densest clay in our range in one of the most practical gongfu shapes, with a cannon spout that pours fast and straight.
The full range, by maker and grade, is in our modern Yixing teapots.
Questions about a particular pot or maker? Write to us.