Yixing, Taodu, with beautiful and rich Taihu Lake in the east, is located at the junction of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces and in the center of Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou. It is an emerging city with developed culture. Yixing, formerly known as Yangxian and Jingxi, has a history of more than 2,200 years since the establishment of Yangxian by Qin Shihuang. Neolithic pottery pieces, celadon kiln sites in the Tang and Five Dynasties and fragments of purple sand cans before the Ming Dynasty have been unearthed in this area. As early as the Song Dynasty, brown and black kiln-made tea sets were deeply appreciated by all drinkers, so in the Ming Dynasty, Yixing purple sand teapots became famous in large numbers, and purple sand tea sets became popular.

From Yixing to Dingshu Town, the scenery is beautiful and unique, including Dingshan, Gengsang, Shanjuan, Mulidong, Donghe, Xihe waters, National Mountain Monument, Zhou Xiaohou's Tomb, Jiaoqiao and so on. The cave is fantastic and mysterious, and the bamboo sea is blue and blue. Tea state, full of fragrance and vitality; Lakes, mountains and mountains set each other off into interest, and they also have a charm.

In the Tang Dynasty, Yixing County was famous for its good tea. During the 600 years from Tang Suzong to Ming Taizu, Changzhou Yangxian Tea was the best tea. And set up the "Gongcha Courtyard". During the Hongwu period in Ming Taizu, the group tea policy was cancelled, which led to the reform of tea-making methods. Because Yixing has a unique crimson clay pottery, its products are usually called "purple sand", usually referred to as "purple sand" for short. After the process of production and development, purple sand reached maturity in the late Ming Dynasty and has been enduring for a long time. Yixing Zisha has been very famous since Ming and Qing Dynasties. In addition to Jingdezhen porcelain capital, there is also a Tao Dou-Yixing. Its products sell well at home and abroad, and Japanese also come to China to learn pot-making technology with purple sand as a treasure. In addition, Yixing purple sand teapot and China tea were sold to Europe together, which became the blueprint of European pot making, showing the preciousness of Yixing purple sand.

There are many kinds of Yixing Zisha pottery, especially Zisha pot, whose unique practical performance and artistic appreciation value are highly harmonious and unified. Therefore, purple sand pottery is deeply loved by connoisseurs of past dynasties and tea lovers at home and abroad. In modern times, with the enrichment of cultural connotation and the improvement of manufacturing technology, Yixing purple sand pottery has become more and more exquisite. Southeast Asia's enthusiastic support for purple sand has also brought unprecedented opportunities for the further development and prosperity of purple sand. Due to the financial crisis and many other factors, the popularity of purple sand collection has cooled down recently, but it is still difficult for purple sand collectors.

Know red porcelain

Zisha mud is the general name of red mud (cinnabar mud), purple mud and Tuanshan mud (the green mud in this mountain is beige). Due to the different distribution of mining areas and seams, the colors of these three kinds of mud materials change slightly during firing, which is intriguing and incredible.

The art of teapot began in Song Dynasty and became in Ming Dynasty. For hundreds of years, the purple sand craft has experienced numerous ups and downs, and gradually formed a worldwide purple sand culture upsurge.

Teapot is a practical tea drinking appliance and a work of art with appreciation value. Its external value is a real horn container, while its internal value is a beautiful work of art.

The beauty of teapot lies in its integration of mud, color, shape, wind, seal, inscription, painting, calligraphy, carving and seal cutting.

Purple clay is rich in color. Among them, Zhu, Zi and Beige are the true colors of purple sand ware, Zhu has shades, Zi has shades, and yellow varieties are rich; If they are named by color, they are Tieqing, Azure, Millet, Pig Liver, Dark Liver, Copper, Begonia Red, Pearl Sand Purple, Aquamarine, Aquilaria Resinatum, Sunflower Yellow, Cold Golden, Pear Peel, Incense Ash, Blue Ash, Dark Green, Tonglu, Ding Hei, Brown Black, Durian Peel and Blackness.

The unique clay sculpture and molding technology of teapot integrates modeling, painting, poetry, calligraphy and seal cutting. These characteristics make the teapot a kind of tea drinking utensil with both practical and appreciative value-Yixing Zisha ware.

There is an interesting Fu Shuo about the discovery of purple sand pottery. In ancient times, there was a strange monk who passed by Dingshushan Village in Yixing. He kept shouting "sell rich soil, sell rich soil!" . The local residents thought it was strange, but they just looked at the monk. Seeing that everyone was silent, the monk let go of his voice and shouted, "You don't want to buy it. How about buying a rich one?" Then I took several villagers to the nearby pottery kilns in Qinglong Mountain and Huanglong Mountain, which produced "fertile soil". When I got there, I saw really colorful clay, red, yellow, green, blue and purple. This is the legend about the origin of purple sand pottery.

The literature on purple sand tea sets began in the Northern Song Dynasty, including the description that "small stones taste cold in spring and new purple mud blooms in spring". During the Southern Song Dynasty, purple sand pottery gained an international reputation. By the Yuan Dynasty, the firing technology of purple sand pottery had developed to a certain extent, and lettering began on the purple sand pot. Monks in Jinsha Temple and Gongchun in Ming Dynasty made purple sand pottery tea sets by hand.

Zisha pottery, referred to as Zisha, is also called Zisha ware or Zisha pottery. Purple sand tea set, simple and generous in shape and simple in color. The longer you make tea with horns, the more elegant the color of the pot body will be, and the more mellow and fragrant the tea soup will be. Even if you pour boiling water into an empty pot, there will be a faint tea fragrance.

According to scientific analysis, the teapot does retain the original flavor of tea soup, can absorb tea juice, and has the characteristics of cold and heat resistance. To sum up, purple sand pottery has five characteristics:

First, Zisha pottery is a kind of pottery made of sand, which neither captures the aroma of tea nor the taste of boiled soup, so it is used to make tea with both color and flavor.

Second, the sandy teapot can absorb the tea juice and make the "tea rust" accumulate in the corner for a period of time, so there is tea fragrance when boiling water is injected into the empty pot.

Third, it is easy to wash. If you don't use it for a long time, it will inevitably smell. You can make tea with boiling water two or three times, then pour cold water, and then make the same original tea.

Fourth, it has strong adaptability to sudden changes in heat and cold. In the cold winter, the injected boiling water will not burst due to the sudden change of temperature; Moreover, the heat transfer of sand is slow, and it is not hot whether it is lifted or held.

Fifth, purple sand pottery is resistant to burning, and it is not allowed to explode on a warm fire in winter. It is no accident that Su Dongpo made tea with a teapot made of purple sand pottery, and there was a poem "The bamboo stove relaxed the wind and lifted the pot to shout". This is why people who pay attention to tea drinking at all times and in all countries especially like to use teapots.

On practicality, teapots are used for making tea and making tea. It has long been concluded that the performance of teapot is "color, fragrance and taste". Moreover, scientific institutions have also made a detailed test of "the summer months are getting worse and worse", and the angle casserole and ceramics have indeed confirmed that casserole is much superior to ceramics. This conclusion is based on the uniqueness of purple sand raw materials. The teapot is practical, because of its high porosity, which makes it have the advantage of good permeability. According to the History of Du Tao in China on page 394, purple clay is characterized by high iron content ... and there are a lot of aggregates in the microstructure of purple clay. There are two kinds of pores, one is the pore inside the aggregate, and the other is the pore group wrapped around the aggregate, most of which are open pores. The good permeability of purple clay may be related to this special microstructure. According to the determination of physical and chemical properties of various clays by Yixing Ceramic Company, it is found that the porosity of purple clay is as high as 10%. Therefore, it shows that good air permeability is of course the main reason for "rich color, fragrance and taste of tea" and "staying up late in summer". The good plasticity and bonding ability of purple sand mud are the reasons why it is beneficial to craft decoration. Moreover, the firing temperature range of purple mud is very wide, from 1 190 degrees Celsius to 1270 degrees Celsius. At present, the firing temperature is controlled at about 1200 degrees Celsius, which is another reason why purple sand products are watertight and not aging, and the more they are used, the more shiny they become. All of the above shows that this kind of purple sand soil mixed with fine sandy sandstone is the best clay for making pottery pots and a unique treasure in Yixing, Tao Dou.

Just think, why do people call purple sand ware unique? In fact, it is unique: unique raw material composition, unique practical performance and unique artistic value. Therefore, it is well-deserved that Zisha pottery has become a famous pottery in China.