Editorial Conversation: Chapter 9, Section 1: Historical & Physical Realities
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[00:00:00] Jason Cohen: Hello everyone, I'm Jason Cohen, the author of An Introduction to the Art and Science of Chinese Tea Ceremony. Today we're discussing Book Two, Chapter Nine, Section One, Historical and Physical Realities. Here to talk about this chapter is our editorial team, Patrick Penny,
[00:00:20] Pat Penny: Hey, hey!
[00:00:21] Jason Cohen: Zongjun Li,
[00:00:23] Zongjun Li: Da jia hao.
[00:00:24] Jason Cohen: And Emily Huang.
[00:00:25] Emily Huang: Hello everyone.
[00:00:27] Jason Cohen: This chapter, like many of the chapters before it, starts with the history of the topic. In previous chapters, we had sections on the history of mines and the history of blending. Here we start with the history of Yixing teapot construction. Why is it worth revisiting history in almost every section?
[00:00:43] Pat Penny: I think the historical precedence in, for example, this section where we're going to talk about actual construction, really shape what is to become our modern technique for developing Yixing teapots. As the techniques have changed over time, the art form has molded and evolved. It was, of course, malleable, and I'm not just trying to make clay puns, but it's come to what it is today, so it's important to ground ourselves in where it began.
[00:01:08] Zongjun Li: Yeah, Yixing is really a living art in the sense that it's constantly evolving. When you look back into the history, you can see a much clearer thread of how things are done today becomes the standard of art today, with the reference of how things gets done previously.
[00:01:28] Pat Penny: I don't think you get to a Pollock or a Rothko without having like a Cezanne or a... we have these transitionary periods throughout history. And I think we need to hit all of them before getting to the modern style because if you look at today's Yixing teapot without having seen maybe where it came, it's it would almost be a mystery, "how did these techniques develop" if we didn't really understand the historical precedence of it.
[00:01:50] Jason Cohen: That's a really interesting comment. The devil's advocate position so to speak of that is that art was developed through punctuated equilibriums where there was revolutions, rebelling against schools, rebelling against stylistic constraints.
And each subsequent movement in the art world was an attempt to differentiate themselves than the orthodoxy that had come before. Do we see that in Yixing? Or is this much more of a slow, continuous development? Because that might be a very Western perspective in the each revolutionary school form of progression.
[00:02:34] Pat Penny: I have a take, and then I'd love to hear everyone else's. Jason, as we were in Yixing, I think we saw two very different schools of thought around Yixing. There was Yixing as a kind of a utilitarian ware. Yixing meant to be used for brewing tea or various other functions.
And then there was Yixing as an art form. And I think probably Yixing as an art medium or an art material probably has had these ebbs and flows of rebellion and adoption. But Yixing as a ware, as we use really in tea ceremony, I don't know. I don't think we've seen this really strong push one way and then the pendulum swinging the other way, but maybe you've got some good examples of where we've seen that throughout history.
[00:03:14] Zongjun Li: I wouldn't say there are a lot of major rebellion against some of the mainstream practice, but certainly something that we do not see very common in the past gets popularized in a certain period of time. For example, a certain decoration method, like pusha (铺砂) or tiaosha (调砂), was certainly not a very mainstream idea back in the days, but right now it's widely accepted.
Mostly getting popularized by a few masters back in the F1 period. I would say you would still see some of these practices being pushed by one or few individuals throughout time. But nothing so revolutionary as some of the art movements that you can see in the contemporary era.
[00:03:58] Jason Cohen: I think I would agree with that and this is something that will come up again much later in the book on the chapter on Yixing design and design movements throughout history. A lot of the Chinese arts specifically, in Asian arts more generally, tend to work in an adoption and adaption methodology where copying and recreating past works as a means for artistic education is much more accepted and appreciated versus the very Western idea of sharp differentiation. We will return to that.
On a similar note, a central theme of this chapter is the way that ceramic arts are influenced by their materials. How did zisha clay as a material influence and co develop with zisha clay as an art form?
[00:04:47] Emily Huang: Zisha has a very unique clay characteristics. It's really hard for it to be thrown onto a wheel and turned like normal clay because of its graininess. So a lot of the artists and masters developed a different, very unique hand built technique.
[00:05:08] Pat Penny: Just doubling down on what Emily said. The physical parameters of the material shape what the material can be made into. And so, there are some constraints based on the physical properties of zisha as a material.
[00:05:21] Jason Cohen: What's an example of that? Could the zisha teapot be used to build huge wares?
Could it be used to build tiny wares? Is it a size issue or is it a, is there other examples of the limitations?
[00:05:34] Zongjun Li: Oh, it's very difficult for people to use slurry molds on pure zisha. You one had to add some additional ingredients to make the material more slurry to be used in slurry mold. And for some of the more grainy zisha, because of the texture, it's very hard to do more refined or delicate design on the wares, making artists very difficult to render certain very stylish design that you can see in other ceramic art forms.
[00:06:06] Jason Cohen: I agree with both of those assessments, but the slurry molds are really quite modern. What was the limitation that shaped zisha in its early days, in the beginning of the foundation of the art form?
[00:06:18] Emily Huang: Is it because that it is not mined in a clay form? Because it is more ore and then there's more processing to it?
[00:06:29] Jason Cohen: The majority of arts in Chinese ceramic manufacturing at the time of late Ming, early Qing when zisha was becoming a unique and independent art form, many of those were either made with molds, either various types of press molds or shape guides or they were turned on a wheel.
And so the idea of a pure hand build, the idea of using no molds and few molds and low decoration and no glaze and hand building the ware was quite differentiated. And that's why zisha artists were amongst just two ceramic traditions in China that signed their wares. So, in what way is zisha unique or differentiated as a material and as an art form from the other ceramic materials and art forms in China?
[00:07:17] Zongjun Li: One thing that I think is highly unique for zisha is that it's very geologically confined in a certain region. Like you don't call clays from other regions zisha, right? Only these clays get mined in Yixing can be called zisha. And you see all these arts centering around zisha, they are also confined by the geolocation because only zisha can be mined in this area.
And even though nowadays you see artists working on zisha materials across China. Frequently they send their unfired wares back to Yixing to get fired for them to I guess qualified as a zisha ware at the end. So I think these highly geo location awareness of zisha is one of the very interesting identity label for zisha as art.
[00:08:09] Jason Cohen: And how did that unique, I would say, almost ideal culture, a mix of regionality and specificity, how did that influence the broader Chinese tea practice in turn? Is it strange to think that such a not niche, but unique production from a single area spread out throughout China to influence the entire concept of Chinese tea and Chinese tea ceremony?
[00:08:37] Zongjun Li: I think teaware wise or ceramic wise, zisha is very isolated, because if you look at other ceramic or porcelain art forms in China, they're very kiln related. All these yao (窑) these kilns are the identity label for these art forms, whereas zisha is very geolocation related.
So I think the idea doesn't necessarily translate into other ceramic art forms. But in terms of influence to the tea world, it actually makes more sense because for tea, it's very geolocation confined. You say tea is from a certain production region from a certain area, from a certain age, from a certain vintage, I think maybe that's where zisha gets a similar idea or it co influenced each other in some ways.
[00:09:27] Jason Cohen: What do you make of the counter argument that all of the traditional ceramic arts, all of the ceramic arts from before the modern era were tied to geolocation? You had the kaolin deposits for Jingdezhen. You had kaolin deposits for Dehua. You have, of course, onggi deposits for Korea, to move a little bit outside of China.
How is it that Yixing remains distinct and unique when other, when all ceramic areas have to have a source of ore and wood for firing and other materials to create an industry?
[00:10:06] Zongjun Li: That's an interesting counter argument, and I think it's valid for Dehua and Jingdezhen to be an equivalent kind of status as Yixing. But these production regions, you don't necessarily see such a thriving art form that's so centering around tea, like tea ceremony or tea culture. You have some cups mostly made by Dehua that are more famous. And in Jingdezhen, it's more about larger format porcelain vase or bowls that gets the highest auction price throughout history.
When it comes to teaware, it's much more infrequent to see. Whereas in Yixing, it's really all about tea culture at least until the contemporary era when people start to make flower pots with zisha.
[00:10:58] Pat Penny: I think, Zongjun that's an excellent point. You know, I was just at the Art Institute in Chicago, and like many other museums we've been to, as you look through the Chinese porcelain section, many of the things have nothing to do with tea ceremony whatsoever, and they had a wonderful collection looking at Xing, Ding, every various kiln you can think of moving through the ages.
And probably there was four pieces of tea ceramics there. But then you get to the Yixing collection and it all is teaware. There might've been one like scepter or something like that, but it was almost all teaware. So I think that's really a wonderful point that Yixing is so much more tied to tea and tea ceremony than many of the other porcelain art forms where a small section of it is dedicated to tea versus being almost the entire practice.
[00:11:43] Jason Cohen: I agree with everything that's been said, but to counter, counter argument my counter argument, I would say that there are at least two major differentiators. One is that Yixing was never an imperial ware. It was always a ware of the mandarins and the southern literati and it was always something that was incubated predominantly and almost exclusively by and for tea culture. The second counter argument, counter argument to the counter argument, is that despite all other ceramic arts being in an area that has deposits of clay, zisha clay and its difficulty in processing and the amount of effort that's required in order to form it is unique, and the clay itself is unique, and the lack of glazing is relatively unique.
And so those walled Dehua and Jingdezhen, you can generally tell the difference. Those differences are driven by technique and glaze, not driven by the underlying base clay. And so I do think, Zongjun, your original argument is highly likely to be correct that the clay itself is so unique and the unglazed presentation of the clay is so unique.
They say tea and zisha, water and zisha, the mother and father of tea.
Turning now to construction techniques, how are Yixing teapots built?
[00:13:07] Pat Penny: Yixing teapots are usually built in stages.
As you build each piece, you're often not making just the spout, the handle, the lid. All of those are usually not one piece that is built and fit together immediately, but often built separately and slowly through various stages with certain tools or techniques added on to each other and fit to make sure that once fired, they're properly fitted.
And often, there is some use of things like shape guides, some wooden tools or paddles to help with incising small cuts to help with adding something like a handle onto the body of a pot and usually a little bit of some kind of like clay water slurry to help with a lot of that binding as well.
So there are some tools and techniques, but generally, things are made by hand out of a slab of clay and slowly added to each other.
[00:13:53] Zongjun Li: One interesting thing that you see in contemporary Yixing production is what people would call a semi handmade teapot or banshou gonghu (半手工壶). It's when you frequently see different parts of the teapot being made actually in different studios.
Like the knob of the lid or the handle bar or the body or the spout, they're all made in different studios and then in one studio they get assembled together in one piece, which is very interesting.
[00:14:21] Pat Penny: I know you wanted to mention the knob lady.
[00:14:23] Zongjun Li: Yeah, just by the street side, casually hanging out, and you see all these cars parking in front of her store, and hand over some carefully wrapped package of clay, and she will turn that into a decimated design of the knob.
Very street gangster style of trading.
[00:14:44] Jason Cohen: Pat, you and I had the chance to make ceramic teawares in a few different places with a few different materials. We hand built teaware with onggi clay in Korea. We block carved raku clay in Japan.
And we made Yixing teaware this most recent time in China. In your experience, what was the difference between the materials and the techniques needed to work with each of those materials?
[00:15:05] Pat Penny: All vastly different and I would say obviously all require a high level of skill that you will develop over time, but as a complete novice, I found yixing to be of intermediate difficulty compared to the ones you've mentioned, but we also had many other opportunities in the US to do some clay work as well.
The material was pretty moldable and pretty shapeable. It was not as crumbly as some other materials we've worked with, did not dry out quite as fast. That being said, the things I made looked horrible. That's just my take, but particularly comparing against onggi, I found onggi so far to be the most difficult thing we've ever worked with. Yixing I feel like I achieved something of a shape that is almost recognizable when working with it.
[00:15:50] Jason Cohen: I think I agree onggi being the most difficult, but despite that, that's where my best piece was made.
[00:15:56] Pat Penny: You also spent about eight hours trying to make a piece. I think we, we spent maybe an hour and a half on Yixing ware.
[00:16:02] Jason Cohen: That's true. We got less time with Yixing. I agree my Yixing pieces did not turn out beautiful. What about Zongjun, you were with us when we were making Yixing. What did you find? How did it compare versus other ceramic arts that you've experienced?
[00:16:16] Zongjun Li: Yeah, I've also worked with some of the onggi materials back in Korea with Master An Shi Sung.
I would say from a beginner's standpoint, yixing is certainly easier to manipulate in a sense that it follows your direction, your hand movements mostly. It will remain a shape when you push them or press them. Whereas for onggi material, it's way too slurry.
You really need to use a lot of technique to have it stand on its own.
[00:16:48] Pat Penny: I think your Yixing looked the best out of the three of us.
[00:16:51] Zongjun Li: I had most modest ambition to just make a simple cup, whereas Jason was trying to make a flower vase which is much more challenging.
[00:17:02] Pat Penny: You know what I really think it was? I think you were getting direct instruction in Chinese, and I think you were purposely translating poorly for Jason and I.
[00:17:10] Jason Cohen: Sabotage. Sabotage.
[00:17:12] Zongjun Li: Sabotage.
[00:17:15] Jason Cohen: I think the other thing about some of the variations in ceramics arts that we've seen, particularly in, I would say maybe Korea being the most, I don't know, rustic is the word that comes to mind, but the least tool based, the least industrialized. And I think the clay reflected that it was nearly totally unprocessed clay.
It doesn't start as ore, it's just clay in the ground. Whereas yixing has, particularly the yixing we were working with our contacts there, were traditionally refined, but highly traditionally refined. They were very well made, well aged zisha material.
[00:17:57] Pat Penny: I think zisha, while it strives for some degree of rusticity, when compared to some other art forms, it is truly much more refined.
[00:18:06] Jason Cohen: Thank you everyone for joining us in this edition of Tea Technique Editorial Conversations. Please join us again for our next conversation, The Tools of Yixing Zisha Construction.
