Editorial Conversation: Chapter 9, Section 5: Making a Yixing Teapot
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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 2, Chapter 9, Section 5, Making a Yixing Teapot. Here to talk about this chapter is our editorial team, Patrick Penny.
[00:00:19] Pat Penny: Hey, hey.
[00:00:20] Jason Cohen: Zongjun Li.
[00:00:21] Zongjun Li: Hello, hello.
[00:00:22] Jason Cohen: And Emily Huang.
[00:00:24] Emily Huang: Hi, everyone.
[00:00:26] Jason Cohen: It's been a little while. It's taken us about three weeks to finish writing and editing this chapter. Was this chapter longer or more difficult in some ways than other chapters?
[00:00:39] Pat Penny: I'll answer that by asking you a question, Jason. Why did you write this chapter?
[00:00:43] Jason Cohen: That's actually my next question.
[00:00:46] Zongjun Li: My second question, why do you write everything in one chapter?
[00:00:52] Jason Cohen: Why did I write the entire construction process in one chapter?
[00:00:55] Zongjun Li: Yeah.
[00:00:57] Jason Cohen: That's also a great question. So, the background to this is after writing close to 27 pages on Yixing construction, I posit that there is much about the physicality of the craft that the written word struggles to communicate.
[00:01:11] Pat Penny: I agree.
[00:01:14] Jason Cohen: Is this chapter still valuable? Should readers just go watch a YouTube video of Yixing construction instead?
[00:01:22] Zongjun Li: That would certainly be very helpful.
[00:01:25] Pat Penny: I feel like this is a great reference chapter. I feel like this is probably a chapter that I don't recommend readers to blow by. I think they should still read through it, but I think after you've read it once, maybe go see a couple pictures, see a YouTube video, and then maybe when you've gone to Yixing or gone to some other teapot making areas and seen it happen in person, you come back to this chapter. And then kind of see how it all fits together. I think in isolation, the words by themselves are not gonna do as much as putting it together with the real life experience or at least a video.
[00:01:58] Jason Cohen: I feel like this chapter is a microcosm of writing this entire book. Why did we think that we were going to be able to cover Yixing in a hundred or so pages? Why did we think that we would be able to cover Yixing construction in a single chapter? We've crossed the 700 page mark.
We're currently sitting at 700 something pages for this book. Yeah, we're gonna hit the two year anniversary of starting this publication process, and I think that writing 27 pages on Yixing constructions is just a microcosm of the entire process of writing this book, and I, I don't know if that's complimentary or not.
[00:02:35] Zongjun Li: Yeah, we did it not because it's hard. We did it because we thought it's not going to be very hard.
[00:02:41] Jason Cohen: Jensen, Jensen Huang, yeah.
[00:02:43] Pat Penny: It's for the love of the game. I think there is some sections in this chapter that whether you've seen teapot construction or not, are helpful. I think learning about clay glue is something that we don't really touch upon in other chapters, and I think when you see the process that might escape your attention, learning some of the specific tools or pounding techniques, and why maybe specific steps are done in certain orders, or like, if you've seen a teapot being built and you were like, oh, they, they closed the teapot body off, what's going on?
This helps to outline a lot of some of the finer techniques that might escape your visual attention while you're watching it happen. So, still really useful, but agree that this is just a representation of the entire book in one chapter.
[00:03:22] Jason Cohen: In many arts and crafts, including painting, glassblowing, photography, and ceramics, it is difficult to generalize a singular method or technique used by the artisans. Is there enough of a consistent singular art form within Yixing tradition to generalize?
[00:03:39] Zongjun Li: Can you elaborate the question a little bit?
[00:03:42] Jason Cohen: Well, we write a singular methodology, or I talk about a single teapot moving through the stages of productions with some caveats on what's the difference between, say, a geometric teapot and a semi spherical teapot, but is this consistent enough? Is there enough consistency in the Yixing art form that it's actually possible to write this book?
You couldn't write this book in this way about ceramics in general, you couldn't write this way about glassblowing in general, because there's too much diversity. There's too much differences in the process. So is yixing really a codified enough art form or a craft where the techniques are so historically developed and taught and passed down from master craftsman, master artisan to their apprentices? Or is this just one of an infinite number of variations, in which case this chapter is even less valuable?
[00:04:34] Pat Penny: I think you made the question even more complicated, but I do feel like that we stand at a crossroads with Yixing teapot construction and development. I think where we stand today we do have the ability to generalize, because there are certain steps, whether or not they're done slightly differently by different artisans, that yield specific discrete components that you need to, first of all, make the teapot, but to also make the different components of a teapot.
There is ore, it needs to be mined. The ore needs to be processed in some way after it's mined to turn into clay. That clay needs to have some kind of processing, whether it's time duration for aging, which might vary, but it's going to go through some sort of processing depending on the artisan. And from there, that artisan is going to take it, and while they might have slightly different technique, they will create something like a teapot body, they will create something like a spout, something like a handle, attach it, right, knobs, everything you go through in this chapter.
And while it might look slightly differently, I think the end object is quite similar across the art form, very generally speaking. Nowadays we can talk about it pretty generalized. I think there might have been a time in the past where some of the knowledge may have been a little more obfuscated, there may have been more master student relationships, which had very specific techniques that might have yielded slightly different outcomes.
And in the future, with technology, like the AI assisted building of teapot or teapot shaping. We might also end up with an art form where we cannot generalize, but I think we are at an interesting point in time that you can.
[00:06:00] Zongjun Li: Yeah, and Yixing, it's such an object that's also heavily defined by its own nature.
It cannot be wheel thrown or slurry mold made. There are a lot of these physicality that define what Yixing can be. So I think those limitations really help define certain ways and only through these ways that you can achieve a common goal, which is making a Yixing teapot.
If the teapot is made by slurry mold, if the teapot is made by clay from somewhere else, it will not be a Yixing, even if it's sent into Yixing County and gets fired along with 2,000 other wares in the dragon kiln in the once a year ceremonial firing. You could call it a Yixing teapot, but it's not really a Yixing zisha teapot.
[00:06:49] Pat Penny: And thank god for that, because just think, if there weren't guardrails around Yixing, how much longer this chapter would have been for the editorial team. I'm just so thankful that there is those physicality to Yixing which defines it.
[00:07:04] Jason Cohen: Where do we see major and minor differences between Yixing artists?
[00:07:09] Emily Huang: Some are more towards the fully handmade process. And so that would be making the teapot entirely by just your touch and feel and experience with the clay. And then there are also other artisans who would prefer to have the assistance of some guides, like shape guides, to help them to create a more consistent angle, the curvature of the handle, or the body, etc. These are probably the two major differences in terms of construction.
[00:07:43] Pat Penny: And I would just add on the fully hand built side, you see people who are sort of purists, and so not only are they fully hand building it, they're fully hand building it themselves. Versus often in the half hand built side of the camp, you have a lot of people who leverage other specialist artisans who can make certain parts of the teapot. Mayb e, the specific artisan who is in charge of the teapot altogether is working with somebody to work on the knobs, or working with someone who's working on the spout attachment, somebody who's gonna do the zheng kou (整口), fitting the lid to the teapot.
So I think that that's another layer deeper between this split of fully hand built and half hand built as well.
[00:08:19] Zongjun Li: Yeah, even to some extreme, some of the fully hand built artists even built their own tools to make the teapot, which is much less often to see nowadays.
[00:08:30] Pat Penny: A mad respect.
[00:08:31] Jason Cohen: What is a display wheel, how is it used in Yixing, and why is it so often confused with a throwing wheel?
[00:08:39] Emily Huang: You can think of it as the main desk. That would be where the Yixing artisan works his teapot up. It's often a wooden platform and elevated from the desk. It does look very much like a throwing wheel, but the two have actually completely different purposes.
The display wheel for Yixing is really just for putting it on there and work on top of it instead of the throwing wheel where it actually turns and you use the circular motion to create the shape.
[00:09:13] Pat Penny: The China Yixing Museum is not full of display wheels with teapots on top of them.
It's not really as the English phrase says, it's not really for displaying, but for putting on top to work, as Emily talked about.
[00:09:26] Zongjun Li: It's more like a operating table for Yixing.
[00:09:29] Pat Penny: That's what we should call it. Let's change the translation.
[00:09:32] Jason Cohen: As far as I know, you don't get rotated on the operating table.
[00:09:35] Pat Penny: Maybe you haven't watched a lot of Grey's Anatomy.
[00:09:40] Jason Cohen: Oh, well. How did the introduction of the display wheel change the construction technique and artistry of Yixing teapots?
[00:09:48] Pat Penny: I think we covered this a little bit, maybe two chapters ago, but previously the way that teapots were constructed was they were on a platform that basically the artist had to be fully on top of. They needed to have a piece of their body kind of balancing the platform while they would be working the teapot with their other hand. So we mentioned that this probably took a higher degree of physical interaction to make sure that you are working the teapot properly and delicately whereas now with the display wheel you really don't need to manage the display wheel itself. It's going to stay in place as long as you hold it there. You don't have to worry about it wobbling and moving it around. So without using the word easier, it should be less physically engaged to work on a display wheel.
[00:10:31] Zongjun Li: Yeah, it's really better for their joint and spine so that they don't need to go to an actual operating table!
[00:10:37] Jason Cohen: TCM doesn't have the cure.
[00:10:40] Zongjun Li: Acupuncture maybe?
[00:10:41] Pat Penny: Chiropractors are doing great in Yixing.
[00:10:45] Jason Cohen: Well, Pat and Zongjun, many of the photos within this chapter are from last year's research trip. How did observing Yixing construction shape your understanding of the art form?
[00:10:55] Zongjun Li: Well, just by looking at how people actually do their job with all the tools and all the procedures that we have read from books and articles, is just infinitely more helpful. And also talking to the artists themselves learning the reason why they choose one tool over another or one method over the the other one is just way better than trying to ponder your head around all these books trying to figure out what exactly is a flap versus a mingzhen (明针). Like, do you actually use the mingzhen (明针) to also guide the shape too? A lot of the tools are actually sometimes even being misused by some books and articles. And just by looking at works being done in person is just so much more helpful than guess around and trying to read more articles to reference across each other.
[00:11:50] Pat Penny: I'd say my takeaway was pretty similar. I think additionally, and we've spoken at length on this, but just the number of people it takes to make a single teapot. I think that really stuck with me. So in this chapter, we have pictures from a few different artisans' workshops, primarily two sets of artisans. Beyond that, there were so many other artists or craftsmen technicians who had some hand in this teapot reaching its final state whether that's the people who are like operating the kiln, the person who was doing lid refinement, knob builder, the pictures that we see in this chapter, which is a lot of these spout and tea body creation or refining.
Literally, it does take a village. It was just so many different people that we were meeting. It was very difficult to have names stick with me because we met so many people involved in making these teapots. Outside of that, the amount of cigarette smoke involved in making a Yixing teapot, the pages of a book will never give you the smell of just being there in Yixing. But it's really just the number of people it takes to make a teapot, that sticks with me.
[00:12:51] Zongjun Li: That's so true. It really brings me to a new level of appreciation to have handmade teapots.
There are a lot of these claims saying that, okay, fully hand built teapots are better in so many ways, but by the end of the day, they're not that much of a difference between them. And if the clay, the base materials are the same, it's basically the same teapot.
With different price tier, of course.
[00:13:15] Jason Cohen: I think in some ways you could think of it as, does an artist use a ruler? Right? Is that a shape guide? Or perhaps if that's going a step too far, spray painters. Spray painters design and cut stencils in order to be able to stick them up, spray paint, and bring them down.
But if you see them do it, there's still quite a bit of skill involved in the amount of spray paint used, and the design flourishes, and whether they over spray or under spray, the blending of colors, right? So it's not as if the stencil makes the work so much less valuable. You know, the most valuable graffiti right now in the world is probably still Banksy who uses stencils extensively. So I strongly agree with that statement, Zongjun that there's really not quite that much difference between the fully hand built and the use of shape guides.
[00:14:07] Pat Penny: So, Emily, since you weren't with us last year for this trip, just kind of looking through these photos, was there anything that jumped out to you as unique or different from what you've previously learned about Yixing teapot construction?
[00:14:18] Emily Huang: Let me talk a little bit about my previous knowledge of Yixing construction. A lot of them were from YouTube videos of documentaries or some teapot sellers. And you see how it's made. They tend to just talk about fully handmade ones. So for me, it was really cool to see the specialized parts, like the lid specialist or the spout specialist and how they have all these different types of options for you to choose. So that was really new to me. And also seeing the shape guides themself, where the clay goes into with the shapes, to see the actual tools and not so much focus on the teapot itself but on all the tools used, the people involved was definitely new information for me.
[00:15:13] Pat Penny: When you said teapot sellers my mind went to teapot C E L L A R S, and I just imagined a cellar full of teapots. And I was like, wow, that is my next home project.
[00:15:23] Jason Cohen: If you dig down deep enough maybe you'll find Xiyatu.
[00:15:27] Pat Penny: My new form of clay, Xiyatu.
[00:15:29] Zongjun Li: Xiyatu. Oh my god.
[00:15:32] Pat Penny: That's such a bad joke.
[00:15:34] Zongjun Li: Such a bad joke. I love it though. The name for Seattle for audience that doesn't understand phonetic translation. But yes, Emily, I totally agree with you. Something that shocked me the most is how organically everything is. All kinds of studios and artists with different specializations are working very coherently with each other in this little town. Actually much reminds me of a place called Huaqiangbei in Shenzhen. They call it the Silicon Valley of China, or the electronic town in China, where a lot of the brands like Xiaomi was born.
It's a town full of all these kind of factories that specialize in camera gadgets, motherboard, battery, outer casing, packaging, shipping, like everything just has their own studios or studios in different complex. And you can basically build your own cell phone or your own computer in one day, just by visiting the town, and you can do the same thing in Yixing too. It's incredible.
[00:16:33] Pat Penny: And that's what we're doing on our next trip. Get ready for the announcement of the Tea Technique Yixing line.
[00:16:38] Zongjun Li: Yay!
[00:16:39] Jason Cohen: As always, our promise to readers, subscribers, supporters, and detractors is that we will never sell tea or teaware at Tea Technique.
[00:16:51] Pat Penny: You have to go to my other website for that.
[00:16:52] Jason Cohen: Yeah, I was thinking of how to work in that joke. Find me on Cult of Quality.
This is my platinum level di cao qing (底槽清). Staying on that topic... as we've said so far twice, this has come up three times now, lid knobs, spouts, filters, handles, they're often made by independent or partnered specialists separate from the craftsmen of the teapot's body. Why is this so?
[00:17:15] Zongjun Li: The technique of building these parts perfectly takes years of practice. In the past for individual artists to do a fully handbuilt tea ware by themselves from end to end takes decades of practice and fellowship.
So in modern half handbuilt Yixing teapots, you have these very organic structure of people deconstructing each components into their own specialty. And then you will require one artist at the very end to put together all of the components, much like building electronics.
[00:17:49] Emily Huang: I think there's also another advantage to having different specializations because they're all working with clay and if one person works on the teapot body and then moves on to the spout then it might dry up too quickly. So maybe having an extra person, a specialist helping you with the handle, with the spout, they can start at different timings with you. We can make sure that when we put together all of them, they're more consistent and then later on when it goes into firing, less risk for it to break apart.
[00:18:22] Pat Penny: That's a really interesting way to look at it. I didn't even think about the asynchronous nature of having different parts built at the same time to make sure that you have the right finished condition of the clay when you put everything together.
I also wanted to add on to Zongjun's comment that it really is kind of like having Yixing be this community manufacturing line where you've got everyone specializing in these different components. And it just, I think adds efficiencies, but it also has this really interesting community tied to it where everyone is working together to build these products.
So it creates something really special. I think when it's not just one artisan, right, who has touched it, but it's this whole community who's really worked on the final art product.
[00:19:00] Jason Cohen: Takes a village to raise a child and one to construct a Yixing teapot.
[00:19:05] Pat Penny: That's the next saying. That's literally what people are going to be saying like 10 years from now.
[00:19:09] Jason Cohen: Well, no one's going to have children anymore, so.
[00:19:12] Pat Penny: But hopefully after everyone reads this book, they'll have Yixing teapots.
[00:19:15] Jason Cohen: Exactly.
How did the collectivization and communist ideology change Yixing teapot construction during the F1 period?
[00:19:25] Zongjun Li: Well, one very important change that emerged during the F1 period is the change on the design of the filter. So, you don't even have a filter before ROC, it's just a cannon spout. And then in the early ROC, late Qing period, you start seeing what they call a flat filter.
So it's basically a part of the teapot's body, but with some punched holes going through the position where people will put a spout onto. Sometimes you have three or five holes. Sometimes you have more holes. But the shape of the filter is still relatively flat or sometimes a little bit indented into the inside of the teapot.
But it was really until the F1 period that people start to install these ball shaped filter. These filters are very round and usually they are constructed separately from the teapot's body and gets attached later on.
[00:20:19] Pat Penny: And for late F1 pots, my god, you need them, because the construction on some of those spouts, whew, if you had leaves going into that spout, like, good luck.
[00:20:29] Jason Cohen: We're gonna return to that. I agree with everything that Zongjun has said, and we're gonna return to that topic of filters in just a moment, but specifically about the communist ideology. There was this ideal of turning craft into industry that was part of the communist revolution, part of the communist ideal of what it meant to industrialize China during this F1 period.
How did that play into the construction techniques and the goals more generally? Or do you know specifically if Chairman Mao had sayings about teapot filters?
[00:21:03] Zongjun Li: Gotta look through my little red book. Hold on a second, guys.
[00:21:08] Pat Penny: I would say we still see some of the effects today. As you mentioned, that kind of transition from craftsmanship into industry. I think that ties into what we were just mentioning about the community, right? You have people who are building different parts, like a manufacturing line, to come together to make one final art product. In the F1 period, it was coming together to make one final economic product to help bolster the economic revolution. I think it's really just this idea of maybe not specifically specialization when we talk about the communist era but a group taking on this industry and building products together for the collective welfare of everyone.
[00:21:45] Jason Cohen: Returning now to teapot filters, advanced practitioners of this praxis debate the value of filters. Can you briefly outline that debate?
[00:21:54] Pat Penny: I'm not really sure that I can outline what I think everyone thinks, because I've seen some wild thoughts on the internet about filters. But I think a lot of what the intermediate and above practitioner base believes is that your technique should be able to prevent the need or necessity of a filter.
So if you put tea leaves into the teapot in an order which helps create its own natural filter, which is something you can do. Or if you pour in a way that is gentle and does not agitate the leaves, you don't need to worry about tea leaves getting stuck in your teapot, I would say with the caveat of if that teapot's construction was good.
I think filters have a, definitely a practical application. When teapots do not have well constructed bodies or spouts, when the pour is obstructed by the length of the spout compared to the handle, there's times where filters definitely make your life a lot easier. But I really believe it's that idea of using your technique in place of a filter that is one of the main points of contention.
[00:22:53] Jason Cohen: What is the wildest thing you've read online about a filter?
[00:22:58] Pat Penny: Something like the more clay the teapot is coming into contact with the better. So you want filters because there's more surface area to contact tea liquid with, which I was just like, okay, sure.
[00:23:09] Jason Cohen: That's, that's pretty wild.
What are the relative proportions of each side of this debate? Maybe Zongjun, you take this. Is it 50 50, or are there more one group than the other, pro filter, anti filter?
[00:23:20] Zongjun Li: Nowadays you see more and more filters being used by higher tea practitioners. I guess people just slowly accept the fact that this is actually a pretty practical components and doesn't necessarily hurt the flavor of the tea coming out from the teapot. It's probably is going through similar kind of historical route as artists starting to use a display wheel to construct teapot. It doesn't really hurt the end goal unless you're really trying to impress someone with your gongfu.
[00:23:50] Jason Cohen: Are you not?
[00:23:52] Pat Penny: Zongjun's always trying to impress the ladies with his gongfu, and we know it.
[00:23:55] Zongjun Li: Oh yeah, every time. Every time I pour all the tea out of my teapot, I will turn the lid up and then display the spout position to everybody to show them that this one doesn't have a filter.
[00:24:06] Pat Penny: Look, mom, no filter.
[00:24:08] Jason Cohen: You need a chadan (茶蛋) zui hao de. Your teapot pack is perfect.
[00:24:14] Pat Penny: He hears that all the time.
[00:24:16] Zongjun Li: Yeah.
[00:24:17] Jason Cohen: Well, same question. Do you personally fall into one of these groups? Are you more or less likely to purchase and use a teapot with a filter?
[00:24:26] Zongjun Li: For me, it doesn't really impact my decision making process.
[00:24:30] Jason Cohen: No preference. Pat?
[00:24:33] Pat Penny: I prefer no filter, or as they say, single filter.
[00:24:38] Jason Cohen: The most confusing naming convention, the no filter is single hole filter. It's actually just one giant hole, it's a filter. Emily? Filter, no filter.
[00:24:50] Emily Huang: Same with Zongjun, doesn't really affect me.
I'm okay with both.
[00:24:55] Jason Cohen: Interesting. So I am also with Pat on this. I prefer my teapots without a filter. So I guess this is just a laowai thing, Pat.
[00:25:03] Pat Penny: It's because we're snobs, trying to show off our gongfu. We were really trying to place it on Zongjun, but it's us.
[00:25:10] Jason Cohen: We have to. Can you imagine the commentary we'd get if we
[00:25:13] Pat Penny: Look at those white boys using a filter.
No gongfu.
[00:25:16] Jason Cohen: No gongfu.
Now, the reason that we spend so much time on this is because I want to contrast this to the view of filters within the Yixing artisan community, within the craftsman community. The construction of a ball filter directly into the body, not a separate attached filter, but a ball filter built from the body is considered to be quite skilled.
So, how do we reconcile these two views?
[00:25:39] Pat Penny: Things that make a teapot difficult to make do not always make a teapot better for use for tea ceremony. One is the art form itself of making the teapot versus the other side, which is the utilitarian use of that teapot.
[00:25:56] Jason Cohen: Yixing teapot construction can be described as a race against time. Why is this so?
[00:26:01] Zongjun Li: Well, one very important factor is water. The moisture content in the clay. I think Emily touched upon that a little bit early. As you construct the teapot, the water are evaporating from the teapot constantly, sometimes too fast, sometimes not enough before it gets fired. So when you have a type of clay with a very heavy water content, very high moisture level, the shrinkage rate and the deformation rate will be very high compared to other drier clay.
And when you're working with clays like that, it's a race against time. And you really need to not only time the sessions of putting all the parts together, but you also need to time the length of where it gets dried before it gets fired. Otherwise, deformation or crackage easily happen in the kiln.
[00:26:54] Jason Cohen: That is called pre fire shrinkage. Most people don't discuss that Yixing teapots shrink twice. They shrink first during construction and immediately after construction before they're fired, which has to be, as Zongjun said, rate controlled and balanced, and then they shrink again in the kiln.
I think that that's underappreciated since the drying shrinkage, the pre fire drying shrinkage can be approximately as much as the kiln shrinkage for many Yixing ceramic materials. And I think that that's quite lesser known and underappreciated.
[00:27:25] Pat Penny: Two stage firing in general is something that is not really widely talked about.
It's something that I only learned through us starting to write this book and obtaining a lot of directly commissioned teapots.
[00:27:36] Jason Cohen: This is slightly different. This is the drying of the wet clay before it's even fired the first time.
[00:27:41] Pat Penny: No, but being fired one time and then being fired again is something that I was saying, I really wasn't even aware before we started writing this book.
[00:27:49] Jason Cohen: We had the chance of making our own zisha wares. Pat and Zongjun, how difficult are these techniques? Were you able to make a teapot?
[00:27:58] Pat Penny: Nope. The techniques that are discussed in this book are above the level of somebody getting their hands on Yixing clay for the first time.
[00:28:07] Zongjun Li: Yeah, just by seeing you guys building the cup and the pan holders really brought me to a new level of appreciation of how hard it is. Even though it's a very hard and dense clay, it doesn't necessarily follow the direction of your hand or your mind. Sometimes I think they have their own thoughts.
[00:28:28] Pat Penny: Yeah, Emily, I think if you were there, you would have probably made a really nice teacup or teapot. And you could have joined in with Zongjun and all the other, you know, native Mandarin speakers who were laughing at Jason and I and calling us various names.
[00:28:40] Emily Huang: That second part sounds definitely very interesting.
[00:28:44] Zongjun Li: I didn't have the patience to translate all the jokes made by our laoshi.
[00:28:49] Pat Penny: It was the kindness of heart that you didn't translate them.
[00:28:53] Jason Cohen: He didn't want to distract us from making our most perfect wares.
When I go back, I'll attempt to make a second elephant teapot. I think that's in the cards for the future.
[00:29:03] Pat Penny: Yeah, elephant teapots are definitely your teapot canon. So I think every place you go you need to make one.
[00:29:09] Jason Cohen: I can try. I think Yixing might pose even more challenging than the last one.
Well, for my last question, we're bringing back a segment from book one, hot takes. My one and only hot take question. We'll do round robin. We'll start with you, Emily. Your favorite lid design and why.
[00:29:31] Emily Huang: I guess the round bowl type.
[00:29:33] Jason Cohen: Lipped or continuous or just sitting on top? Lipped is a good one.
[00:29:38] Emily Huang: Lipped.
I really like the sound and the feeling of it closing in. When the lid closes, it has like a different sound and you feel like it's closed.
[00:29:49] Jason Cohen: The visual distinction of this is the lid and this is the body.
[00:29:53] Emily Huang: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:29:55] Jason Cohen: Zongjun?
[00:29:55] Zongjun Li: For me, continuous. I really enjoy the shape of a continuous lid shape and how they manifest a kind of an early stage idea of precision manufacturer. I think it's beautiful.
[00:30:10] Pat Penny: This is such a hard question. I think I'm gonna have to go with outset.
And it's really because I, even though I don't own any, I really love how the julunzhu (巨轮珠) lid sits on top of the teapot body. I have something similar, I kind of have the longdan (龙蛋), the dragon's egg, which it's still a little bit more like lipped, but I really love the outset, particularly on julunzhu (巨轮珠).
[00:30:32] Jason Cohen: Isn't the dragon's egg more continuous? Isn't it a smooth, continuous contour?
[00:30:37] Pat Penny: Mine's not. Mine definitely is lipped.
[00:30:40] Jason Cohen: My favorite is continuous contour. I think that the lack of visual separation is quite interesting and allows you to do some interesting things.
[00:30:48] Pat Penny: I think our favorite is supposed to be lipped because of what the design is supposed to look like for some certain historical teapots. (Note: Pat is referring to the Daoba Xishi shaped teapots.)
[00:30:56] Jason Cohen: That's all the time that we have for today. Thank you for joining us for this edition of Tea Technique Editorial Conversations. Please join us again for our next conversation, Historical Experiments in Yixing Construction.
