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- There are three basic sandy clays found in this county which were used to make the famous Yixing stonewares. These clays include zisha, a rose-brown clay; banshanlu, a creamy white clay; and zhusha, a reddish clay. Different colours are achieved by firing at different temperatures, by blending the clays together or by adding vegetable or mineral colours to the clay.
Pottery had been made in Yixing county since Neolithic times and there were some interesting vessels produced here during the Song dynasty (960-1279), as attested to by archaeological data, but it was not until the past five centuries that the ceramics of this area gained notoriety, and it was mainly for the manufacture of teapots and objects for the scholar�s table.
According to tradition, it was an anonymous monk living at Jinsha temple near Yixing, who produced the first Yixing teapot in the early sixteenth century. An�other potter named Gong Chun is also known to have produced fine quality Yixing teapots at this time, and he is usually recognized as the first great Yixing potter. Other important makers of early Yixing teapots during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) include Dong Han, Zhao Liang, Yuan Chang, Shi Peng, Li Maolin, Shi Dabin, Li Zhongfang, and Xu Youquan. Of these, perhaps Shi Dabin was the most celebrated. The greatest Yixing potter of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) was Chen Mingyuan. Other noted early Qing Yixing potters include Chen Ciwei, Hui Mengchen, Hui Yigong (No. ii), and Hua Fengxiang. Hui Mengchen�s main contribution to the Yixing teapot shapes is the small pear-shaped teapot, which is still copied to this day by potters. They are generally known as �Mengchen� pots. Hua Fengxiang, a potter who, according to heresay, lived during the Kangxi era, deserves special mention. He created an unusual and elegant teapot, which is square in section and inspired by the Han bronze vessel fanghu. A later copy of this shape is included in the collection (No. 36).
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was only a handful of master potters producing a limited number of pots for scholars and collectors. With the increasing popularity of the Yixing teapot, more and more potters became in�volved in the production of Yixing wares for the general public. Shapes were simplified and largely limited to those that were suitable for mass production.
For a period of about one hundred years, there seemed to be no great creative development or enthusiastic interest in Yixing wares. In the late eighteenth century, a revival was started almost single-handedly by a scholar named Chen Hongsheng, who is better known by the name, Chen Mansheng. He was appoin�ted Magistrate of Yixing in 1816 and held this position for three years. In this short period of time he developed eighteen new teapot designs and encouraged the best potters of the area, including Yang Pengnian (Nos. x bottom left and middle) and Shao Erquan, to create them. The pots, which he commissioned, had to be made by hand in order to achieve the high quality of the Yixing teapots, which had existed prior to the use of moulds. His literati friends were invited to write inscriptions for the pots and, therefore, they often bore three seals: that of Chen Mansheng, the potter, and the artist. Chen Mansheng was successful in reviving the pottery industry and set a trend which was followed by other scholars and wealthy collectors to commission teapots on which their own inscriptions or seals were engraved. This collaboration between scholars and potters introduced by Chen Mansheng endured until the end of the nineteenth century. One such scholar was Zhu Jian, who lived during the first half of the nineteenth century and was an accomplished flower painter, particularly in his depictions of the prunus. Enjoying carving on a wide variety of material, Zhu started the fad of encasing
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