Yixing Zisha (Purple-Clay) Pottery Making

Yixing purple-clay pottery emerged in the Song-Yuan period and matured in the Ming, when masters such as Shi Dabin developed signature forming methods upon the local coarse-pottery tradition. Yixing is a county-level city under Wuxi.

It uses Yixing's distinctive purple clay, prized for its granular structure and double-pore body, worked with over a hundred handmade tools through slab-beating, paddling the body, joining, smoothing and incised decoration, largely by hand.

Because the porous body suits tea, zisha teapots blend utility with scholarly refinement and are a key vessel of Chinese ceramic and tea culture. The craft entered the first national intangible heritage batch in 2006.