The seal on the bottom of a Yixing teapot usually gives a name: the potter, a workshop, a studio or a trade name. Sometimes it is a line of poetry. It tells you whose name the pot was sold under. It does not prove who made the pot, when it was made or what clay it is. Read it as one clue among several, never as a certificate.
What do the marks on a Yixing teapot usually say?
Most Yixing pots carry a seal on the base, and many also have small seals under the lid and under the handle. The base seal is usually the name of a maker, a workshop or a company. The smaller seals often give the individual potter's name. Carved inscriptions, poems and decorative names also turn up.
A few common patterns:
- A maker's name. A personal name, sometimes with a studio name or a word like "made by". The most common kind today.
- A workshop or company name. Early twentieth century firms in Yixing stamped their own names and trademarks on the base, with the individual potter's seal under the lid or handle. One pot can carry the company's mark on the base and the maker's name under the lid.
- A borrowed famous name. Some names are used as a style rather than a claim. Mengchen, after the seventeenth century potter Hui Mengchen, appears on countless small red pots that he never touched, often alongside a carved line of poetry.
- A poem or phrase. Carved or stamped lines about tea, fragrance or the maker's studio. These are decoration and tell you little about the maker.
Most seals are in seal script, an old form of Chinese writing that many modern Chinese readers find hard to read. Wooden and metal stamps also wear, and some seals are carved in deliberately unusual styles. Expect to need help reading one.
When did Yixing potters start using seals?
Seals appear occasionally in the late Ming dynasty and became the norm from the Qing dynasty onwards. Before that, a pot might carry a signature cut into the clay with a blade, or no mark at all.
That means an unmarked pot is not automatically suspect, especially an older, ordinary one. Many everyday pots were never marked, and many good ones went out with only a workshop stamp. Some of the most useful old pots for tea are plain, unmarked working pots.
Does a seal prove who made the pot?
No. A seal shows whose name the pot is meant to sell under. Workshops routinely subcontract pots to lesser potters, who stamp them with the seal of a better-known name. Family members and students borrow a master's seal and even his clay. Some masters later disown their early work.
The more famous the name, the more likely the pot is fake, because famous names are what get copied. Gu Jingzhou, the most celebrated Yixing potter of the twentieth century, is the classic case. The great majority of pots on the market bearing his seal were not made by him. The same is true of the famous Ming and Qing names.
For most pots, the person on the seal is a working craftsman whose name means little outside Yixing. That is fine. The seal is not the reason to buy the pot. If a listing leans hard on a name and says little about the clay, treat the name as marketing.
How do experts attribute an old Yixing pot?
By looking at everything together. Specialists compare a pot with documented examples of a maker's work, then weigh its style, the era, the clay colour and texture, the firing, the seals, the calligraphy and the decoration. Last, they judge the craftsmanship against the standards of its time.
No single feature settles it. A right seal on the wrong clay, or a Qing shape with modern tool marks, gives a pot away. So does construction. Before the Qing dynasty, the spout usually joined the body through a single hole, and a filter of several small holes became common later. Details like these take years of handling pots to judge. That is why attribution of valuable antiques is left to people with reference collections, and why even they sometimes disagree.
How do you read the seal on your own pot?
Photograph it well and ask someone who reads seal script. Take clear pictures of the base, the underside of the lid and the underside of the handle, in raking light from one side so the characters stand out. Then compare them with seals in museum catalogues and auction records.
Be realistic about what you will learn. Reading the seal gives you the name the pot was sold under. Matching it against a published seal gets you a little further, but forgers copy published seals too. If the name is famous and the price was ordinary, assume the pot is a later piece in that style. Judge it as a teapot instead: the clay, the pour and the tea it makes. Our guide on how to tell if a Yixing teapot is real or fake covers the checks that matter more than the seal.
What about seals on antique pots?
Treat them with extra care. Old seals are copied too, and a fake antique is often dressed with staining, dirt or wear to match the name. A "Qing" pot with a famous seal at an ordinary price is almost always a later pot.
The better approach with antiques is to buy the pot, not the name. Ordinary working pots from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with a workshop mark or none, often brew beautifully and cost far less than anything with a famous seal. For how to buy older pieces without paying too much in lessons, read buying antique teaware online. How to clean an old Yixing teapot explains what to do when one arrives.
What do the seals on our pots tell you?
The same thing as any seal: the name the pot is made under. Our modern pots come from the Wu Xing Shan Fang studio in Yixing, and each listing names the maker, so you do not have to rely on reading the seal. For who the studio's potters are, read who is Chen Ju Fang?
If you want to know what the seal on one of our pots says, or on a pot you already own, send us a clear photo and we will tell you what we can read.