The Yixing teapot Exhibition at the Tea Institute at PSU - The clays

To understand the complex world of Yixing teapots, the best is to go back to the basic ingredient that makes these teapots so special: the clay. Many mines may now be depleted, transformed into lakes, but it's still in the ground where everything begins.

Through a nice coincidence, a student who comes from Yixing joined this very first lecture about clays. And despite growing up there, it's the first time he saw so many Yixing clays. In the box below, Teaparker was able to gather clay from 19 different locations (or sometimes from the same mine, but from different layers).

It's not enough to simply identify the original location of the clay. The information about the layer is also very important. When you dig a hole in the ground, various layers with different colors appear. The deeper we dig, the further we go back in time, since these each layer is accumulation of sediments from a certain era. Not all layers are equally suited to make clay. The most suitable layer with the finest clay in a certain location is often called Nen Ni (fine clay).

But let's not throw too many confusing names around. What we need to know is that all these Yixing clays from these different locations and layers can be summed up with 3 colors:

Chalin clay area

1. Hongni (red clay).

What is the characteristic of hungni when it comes from the ground? It's yellow! And it's very soft to the touch! It's so soft, it seems there's some powder that rubs off on the skin of our finger as we touch it. It feels powdery like talc.

Zhaozhuang Nen Ni clay

Zhuni clay belongs to the same category as Hongni. It's also yellow when it comes from the ground (and will also turn red once it's fired). What characterizes zhuni over hongni is that the original clay is finer than regular hongni.
 

Jianli Nen Ni clay

2. Luni (green clay)

As you can see from the picture, green clay has a more granular feel than hungni. It's the roughest, but also the one that it crushed the most easily. It's friable, brittle. Its color is the least even.
This green clay will turn into yellow when it's fired and will give us the pot color called 'duanni'.

Taixi clay well (top of mountain)

3. Zini (purple clay)

Purple clay feels the hardest and doesn't brittle or turns into powder like luni or hongni. However, despite the rough look, its surface is also very smooth.
With zini, the color remains purple after firing.

Touching the 3 different types of clays proved very interesting and different from what we thought these clays would be like.

Touching a zhuni teapot right after touching a zhuni grade hungni clay also helped understand how the finesse, the smooth touch of the clay translates into the skin of the teapot!

Note: My spring 2015 Wenshan Baozhongs are now available here! And for further reading on Yixing wares, I've added this book with pictures of the National Palace's Yixing collection.