New Yixing pot - help deciding
I got this little guy at an estate sale yesterday for $3! The original price sticker was still on bottom. The lid was taped shut. It has never been used! I was thinking he looks like he wants to be a puerh pot. I already have a Yixing for green oolongs. Any other suggestions? Puerh? Black tea? Dark oolongs?
I’m not usually a jeleous person but at this moment I’m green with envy…. Such a gorgeous piece for $3!!! Wow and wow! The luck has definitely smiled upon you… :) I don’t own a Yixing yet, I’m currently shopping for my first, hopefully I’ll find something beautiful that won’t break my bank account. I say your new Yixing looks like it wants to drink some good pu’erh.
Oh my goodness! Your new Yixing is lovely. The little lizard is especially adorable! Congrats on such an awesome find. I agree that it looks like it would be happy with some pu’erh inside.
Great! That was my thought about him! Believe it or not, I actually went to the sale near the end of the first day and the pot was $6. I decided to wait until the next morning when all small items go half price to buy him. We had a small ice storm, they opened two hours late, and he was still there! There was a piggy pot, too, but we love lizards and such so I thought my girls would enjoy him.
OMG you are so lucky that pot was still there!!! What WAS the original price if you don’t mind saying.
You could have bought the piggy pot and sold it to one of us here for more LOL someone would have bought it (looks in mirror). :)
He’s available at Teavana for $30
I am kicking myself a bit for not buying the piggy. He was bigger and had a small piggy on his back for the lid. There was a large Mickey Mouse pot. Sigh. Why didn’t I buy them all?
The sticker said $26.95 from A Southern Season. They also have it online at theteasmith.com for the same price.
I do wonder, though, yappychappy, why one shouldn’t buy a used Yixing? I have read that you can boil them them and reseason them, and that the older they are, the better they are. Is there more to this, or were you being cautious about seasoning or the porosity of the clay vessel?
This one still had the “booger glue” (sorry, family term for that stuff like rubber cement) that the maker puts in to keep the lid from slipping and breaking. It is the dickens to get it out, and I wonder if that is no one else bought this…they thought it couldn’t open perhaps. Or maybe we just don’t have many lizard fans locally! :)
Cautious about seasoning or porosity of the clay. For more info you’d have to ask those more seasoned with yixings.
I love the pot and considered buying it myself for retail price (:
I have one rather plain Yixing that I got from purepuer.com. I seasoned it the slow way because I was so afraid the pot would chip or break in boiling water! It has lovely lines, so I love it even though it is not decorated! Did you see the Sherlock where they know the young Chinese girl is near because the Yixing pot in the museum must be painted every day with tea so it will not crack? I think it was supposed to be 400 yrs. old. Sherlock knows she reveres the pot too much to leave it!
I look forward to using this one in about a week for some nice puerh! Hope you find one (or two or three) that you love!
I think the best pots are likely to have been used already.
Whether used or unused, what’s important is the pot itself (the quality of the craftsmanship and the raw material). With a used pot, obviously you do have to make sure that it doesn’t have any major problems (mold inside, strong odors, etc.). But boiling (or, in extreme cases, using a diluted non-cholorine bleach solution) should be able to clean most pots if there’s any uncertainty.
Thank you, Will! I would be glad to find an old Yixing, and if I was unable to ask the owner what it was seasoned for, or if they didn’t know about the pots and had brewed many types of tea in it, I would boil the pot and re-season it for my use. I did buy the brush from pure puer for “painting” my pot with leftover tea or leaf rinse water after use. It is oddly soothing and enjoyable to paint one’s pot with tea.
I like. I’m kind of new (knowledge wise) to tea. What is a Yixing Pot?
http://purepuer.com/puer_tea/do/category/yixing_clay
Here are some pots and a brief explanation. They can be simple or highly stylized. Many are terribly expensive. Most are tiny. They become seasoned and you may make one kind of tea in a Yixing pot. It is said that after many years, a well seasoned pot will make a good cup of tea with no leaves being added, just because the pores have absorbed the flavor – seasoning. It is named after the area the clay comes from, and there are lots of fakes floating around.
I miss the early days (maybe 7-10 years ago) when tea was just starting its recent rise in popularity. You could get really nice yixing pot off of eBay, directly from China, for about $8-10. The really nice ones- larger and more elaborate- went for about $30. And those prices include shipping! I bought a bunch one year for Christmas gifts, everyone loved them.
Oh, Erin! I wish I had been around the tea world in those days! Now I will just keep hunting in estate sales.
Aaahhh… That sounds so good…. I wish I was drinking loose tea back then… These days you can go bankrupt buying teaware if you’re not careful… I’m hunting my local thrift shops, sometimes you can get pretty lucky. :)
I remember those days, I just did not have finances in order enough to benifit.
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