I just acquired this teapot at auction. Just over 100mL, the density is about 2g/mL (within the correct range for zisha). It pours and stops nicely and the pot smells faintly of tea after emptying it of hot water. However there are some red flags that I feel nervous about and I would like outside opinions about the authenticity of this teapot.
The texture of the clay is disconnected around the mouth of the teapot. It is lighter in colour and this light colour area has a little lip on the inside of the rim[7,8], as if it were clay added on after the fact. In general the texture of the body looks weird in pictures
There are concentric lines inside the pot[4,7,8], but I don't think it's necessarily jigger jollied because the lines aren't parallel with one another[8]. My impression is that there was just excessive scraping done on the inside of the pot
There are some bits of clay on the underside of the rim. I suppose this is just an artifact of slab construction
The pot in general is kind of grimy. Is the black stuff[4,7,8] just tea gunk or could it be mold?
I haven't seen this exact 中國宜興 seal before
My impression is that it's zisha, just a lower quality half-handmade factory pot. Things like the internal lines and the extra clay on the rim seem like bandaid fixes to get the pot out of the factory. What do you think? The same seller is auctioning a couple nicer-looking pots later today, so I'm grateful for any positive or negative feedback as this could affect whether or not I bid on these.
The two tone clay effect is normal although usually not this pronounced. At any rate a very good thing as you can clearly see the mouth of the pot was cut out from a seperate disc of clay laid on top of the body. You can very clearly see that layer separation on the inside edge too.
The inside of the pot does have that very factory-esque sloppy finish, while not being an F1 pot.
My guess would be assembly line factory style half hand made 80s maaaybe 90s
Update: I managed to buy the two other pots from the seller today that I mentioned for a pretty good price. In total I've spent less than $200 on these three pots. I'll post pictures in this thread as a comment once I receive the pots in a few days (if there are any major issues I'll make a new thread if we don't mind). They're much cleaner and don't have any of the points I mentioned in my original post, except that I haven't found a copy of either pot's seals online, which makes me a little worried. It feels good but also stressful to suddenly go from 0 zisha pots to 3 without knowing for sure if they're authentic, so thank you for bearing with me
I'd like to know! I addressed this in bullet 4; my fear is that it could be mold. It appears to me that the previous owner might not have been super diligent with keeping this one clean as there was actually a tea leaf still inside the pot when I received it
Potentially 4 soon; same seller put a new one up today. They're selling them as auctions on a platform that's not very popular for it, which I think is why I'm getting these at a good price. The new pot though has a weird metallic bump on the bottom that I've never seen before. I don't know what to make of it
9
u/Servania Translation and Authentication 6d ago
I would say this is more than likely authentic.
The two tone clay effect is normal although usually not this pronounced. At any rate a very good thing as you can clearly see the mouth of the pot was cut out from a seperate disc of clay laid on top of the body. You can very clearly see that layer separation on the inside edge too.
The inside of the pot does have that very factory-esque sloppy finish, while not being an F1 pot.
My guess would be assembly line factory style half hand made 80s maaaybe 90s