Yixing (宜兴) sits in southern Jiangsu, on the western shore of Lake Tai. For five centuries it has supplied the clay body that made the Chinese teapot possible.
The three clays
The name zisha (紫砂, "purple sand") covers three distinct ore bodies, mined from different seams of the same hilly region.
| Clay | Chinese | Colour when fired | Character |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zini | 紫泥 | Warm brown-purple | The standard body. Forgiving, widely used |
| Zhuni | 朱泥 | Orange-red | Fine grain, shrinks hard in the kiln, prized for oolong |
| Qingshuini | 青水泥 | Pale green-grey | The rarest. Fine, difficult to fire |
A fourth body — duanni (段泥), a sandy yellow — is a coarser blend often used for larger pots.
Why the clay matters
Zisha contains a high proportion of iron and a mixed grain structure of quartz, mica and kaolin. Fired once at around 1100°C, the body stays micro-porous.
That porosity is the whole point. It softens the aromatics of a tea rather than reflecting them, which is why a Yixing pot and a porcelain gaiwan give you different drinks from the same leaf.
From ore to pot
The ore is weathered for months, ground, sieved to separate the grain sizes, then aged. A potter uses the grain size deliberately: coarser clay for a wood-fired pot's texture, finer clay for a thin-walled zhuni shui ping.
The form is then either thrown on the wheel, beaten from a slab, or fully handmade from beaten slabs joined by hand — the method that produces the most expensive pots and the ones that change least under the hand.
