A fully handmade Yixing pot is built by hand from flat slabs of clay, with no mould. A half-handmade pot has its body and lid pressed by hand into a mould, while the spout and handle are usually made by hand, and the whole pot is assembled and finished by hand. A mould-made pot is formed entirely in a mould, often from liquid clay or by machine. The methods differ in time, skill and price. For the tea, the clay matters more than the method.
How is a fully handmade Yixing pot made?
A fully handmade pot is slab-built. The potter beats clay into thin sheets with a wooden mallet, cuts out the pieces and joins them by hand. No mould and no wheel. A single pot can take days, weeks or, for complex pieces, months.
Yixing pots are not thrown on a potter's wheel. For a round pot, the maker cuts a long strip from a slab and wraps it into a ring on a turntable, sealing the joint with wet clay slip. The ring is then paddled with a flat wooden beater as the turntable spins, which gradually pushes the wall out into a curve. Discs are cut for the base and shoulder and sealed in. The spout and handle are cut from the slab using paper templates, rolled and shaped, then joined with slip. The lid and knob are made the same way. Finally the surface is smoothed with bamboo and horn tools, and the maker stamps a seal on the pot.
All that beating compresses the clay, and every joint is made and hidden by hand. A skilled maker can make a round pot look as if it grew that way. Look closely and you will usually find small signs of the hand: a faint joint line inside, slight tool marks, a curve that is not quite mechanical.
What does half-handmade mean?
Half-handmade means the body and lid are formed by pressing clay by hand into a mould, usually a two-part plaster or wooden one. The spout and handle are usually made by hand. The pieces are then assembled, trimmed and polished by hand. Each pot still takes two to three full workdays.
This is not a shortcut in the sense most people imagine. It still takes years to learn to join a spout so that it pours well, to fit a lid, and to finish a surface cleanly. Apprentices often work on several pots at once, and it is the method most Yixing students learn on before they build fully by hand. Mould-assisted making is also old. It was used in Yixing long before modern factories.
A good half-handmade pot of real ore is a serious teapot. It costs less than a fully handmade one because it takes less of a skilled person's time, not because it brews worse.
What is a mould-made or slip-cast pot?
A mould-made pot is formed entirely in a mould with little or no handwork. In slip casting, liquid clay is poured into a plaster mould, left to firm up against the walls, and the excess poured out. Other cheap pots are pressed by machine from soft clay in full-body moulds. The pot is then dried, trimmed and fired.
This is how most cheap "Yixing" pots are made. Labour in China is no longer cheap, so a pot sold for around US$30 is not going to be handmade or even half-handmade, whatever the listing says. Cheap mould-made pots are also the most likely to be made from clay that has nothing to do with Yixing ore, coloured to look right. The method is not the problem in itself. The clay usually is.
How can you tell which method was used?
Look inside with a torch. The inside of a pot is a more reliable guide than the outside, because makers finish the outside most carefully. None of these signs is certain on its own, since a skilled finisher can hide most of them.
- Fully handmade: faint marks from the paddle on the inner wall, a visible joint where the base or shoulder disc was sealed in, a slightly uneven wall thickness, and a joint where the spout meets the body.
- Half-handmade: very even, smooth inner walls, sometimes with a faint vertical line where the two halves of the mould met. Spout and handle joints are still visible.
- Slip-cast: the inside mirrors the outside. If the pot has raised decoration on the outside, you will often see its shape pressed into the inside wall. Walls are thin and very uniform.
- Wheel-thrown: spiral throwing rings inside. This is not the Yixing method at all, and it is a common sign of a pot made elsewhere.
Ignore the traditional tests of craftsmanship. A lid that fits tightly enough to stop the pour when you cover the air hole, or a spout, rim and handle that line up exactly, used to show a skilled hand. Moulds make both easy now, so they prove very little about how a pot was made.
Does the making method change the tea?
Much less than the clay does. A half-handmade pot of good, aged ore will make better tea than a fully handmade pot of poor clay. Buy the clay first, then the craft.
The method does affect things you notice in use. The way the spout is joined and the size of the holes behind it decide how fast and cleanly the pot pours, and those are hand skills in both handmade and half-handmade pots. A pot that pours slowly with real tea in it is an annoyance every session, whatever the method. For which clay does what, read zini, hongni, zhuni and duanni explained.
Why do handmade pots cost so much more?
Time and skill. In the time a skilled maker builds one pot fully by hand, a workshop can produce many half-handmade pots and hundreds of cast ones. The maker's reputation and rank then multiply that difference.
That gives you a useful floor. A pot sold as fully handmade from real Yixing ore for under about US$100 should make you doubt the listing. The reverse is not true. A high price proves nothing about how a pot was made. For the rest of the price story, read why are Yixing teapots so expensive?
How are the pots in our range made?
Our modern pots come from the Wu Xing Shan Fang studio in Yixing, made by Chen Ju Fang and by apprentices at the studio. Each listing names the maker and the clay grade. Studio apprentices learn on half-handmade pots, as students do across Yixing, before building fully by hand.
If the making method of a particular pot matters to you, ask us before you buy and we will tell you what we know. To compare pots by maker, see the Shui Ping 90ml by a studio apprentice and the Si Ting 145ml by Chen Ju Fang, both in Bronze grade, or browse our modern Yixing teapots. For more on the studio, read who is Chen Ju Fang?
Look inside before you look at the seal.