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- ware artifacts as well as a huge number of ordinary vessels being produced for local and international sale.
The old tradition of Yixing potters collaborating with scholars and artists has been revived to some extent in the past decade or so. Well-known contemporary artists are now embellishing Yixing teapots by providing paintings and calligra�phy. Scholars, too, are once again designing teapots in cooperation with Yixing potters.
Production of Yixing Wares
The zisha clay found at Yixing is of a kaolin-quartz-mica type, with a high content of iron, which gives it a dark purplish-red colour. It is prepared and then fired in climbing kilns called dragon kilns usually at temperatures between 1100 to 1200 degrees centigrade to achieve its stoneware stage. However, Yixing ware does vary from a porous earthenware to a highly vitrified stoneware.
Yixing potters did not prepare their clay by throwing it on the wheel but by a method of free hand kneading or by the use of a method of wooden moulds. Also, some early pieces were made by a press-mould method.
Throughout the past five centuries of producing Yixing teapots, the Yixing potters have used their ingenuity to invent a vast number of skillfully modelled shapes in various sizes, which fit into three basic categories:
1. shapes based on ancient artifacts made of bronze, jade or ceramic;
2. shapes adapted from nature such as trees, plants, flowers and fruit; and
3. geometric shapes such as cylinders, cubes, rectangles and spheres.
The decorations on Yixing pieces also exhibit a great variety of inventiveness. Many of the early examples were left plain or had minimal decoration. They were left undecorated as their subtle colour, inventive shape and natural surface texture were considered aesthetically satisfying in themselves. Occasionally a fine-grained rock is added to give the surface a pear-skin appearance.
One of the earliest forms of decoration was finely engraved calligraphic inscrip�tions of various styles, which has remained the standard form of decoration to this day. It should be noted that the first inscriptions were engraved on the base in kaishuor regular script. These inscriptions included the potter�s name, date and sometimes a line of poetry. The inscriptions were first written in ink using a brush on the leather hard body either by a scholar, a fellow potter or the potter himself. Then, the inscription was carved using a bamboo or steel knife. Later the inscriptions came to be placed on the body of the vessel. In the early seventeenth century, potters started to use a seal to mark their works. A further development was the engraving of painting themes of landscapes, birds and flowers, plants and figures based on designs from such artists� manuals as The Mustard Seed Garden and the Ten Bamboo Studio, as well as designs taken from publications of ancient bronze inscriptions and old coins and tiles. As was mentioned earlier, during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, some decorations were made by the techniques of the press-mould, stamping and applique. Many of this type were exported to Europe, and some were further ornamented with metal mounts by the Europeans (No. i). Stamped diapers of key fret and other popular patterns were often found on the borders and rims of the pieces.
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