High quality mud
Most people are confused about the clay of Yixing pot. One of the main reasons is that in the current market, besides modeling, the most chaotic thing is raw materials. The No.4 well in Huanglong Mountain used to produce the best quality mud, but it was closed in 2000 because it became a dangerous mine due to flooding. Today, many masons have to buy pot materials from other provinces. Zheng Banqiao said "Yixing sand is used in the pot". If Yixing pot is made of foreign sand, the chaos can be imagined.
Mud is the foundation of Yixing pot. Up to now, no matter from the aesthetic feeling or the practical function of making tea, the clay in any other place exceeds the high-quality clay in Huanglong Mountain, Yixing. The mud used in the old No.1 factory was mined by No.4 well in Huanglongshan. Even the No.4 well, no matter the purple mud, red mud and section mud, is far less than the ordinary clay used in daily life. Therefore, the local people also call the mud used to make pots "mud in mud". High-quality clay for making cans is as precious as rosewood and Huang Huali in wood. Look at the clay of the pot with naked eyes, and you will find the mystery of the high-quality clay of the old factory pot. For example, a little red or yellow is faintly visible in purple, a little yellow often appears in red mud, and some red is often mixed in yellow mud. That is, a main color is mixed with other erratic colors. Pots are used to make tea. Old factories love teapot, and most of them are tea tasters. Only the high-quality Yixing pot can brew the aroma and sweetness of tea better. From the aspects of soup color, taste, anti-foaming, anti-rancidity, etc., the teapot of the old factory has incomparable advantages. Elegant modeling
Shape, that is, modeling, is the aesthetic basis of Yixing pot. The ancients advocated beauty and called it seven points and three points. The same is true of Yixing pot. Whether it is a light vessel, a square vessel, a flowered vessel or a ribbed vessel, we must first look at its shape.
The design of the "old factory teapot" can be roughly divided into four points:
One is to imitate the more classical and classic styles in the Ming and Qing Dynasties and the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China. Because there are many famous people in the old factory of the Republic of China (they have always been honored as counselors), when choosing the style of the old factory, they did not imitate it mechanically, but incorporated the personal aesthetic taste and aesthetic concept of the times of the old artist, which is actually a kind of re-creation.
Second, the pot shapes created by the old artists and rookies in the first factory, such as the "spring pot" and "evergreen pot" by "counselor" Zhu Kexin; Director Gao Haigeng's jade collection pot, counselor Gu Jingzhou's Xinqiao pot, Gu Shaopei's Long Dingzhu pot, Li Changhong's bamboo slips pot and so on.
Third, the pots designed by some teachers of the former Central Academy of Arts and Crafts and now Tsinghua University Art Institute, among which the "pen-lifting pot" designed by Professor Gao Zhuang (the final draft of the national emblem) and initiated by Gu Jingzhou is the most classic; There are also "Quhu" created by Zhang Shouzhi and Wang Yinxian.
Fourthly, the purple sand jointly created by contemporary painters and artists, such as the design of painter Yaming, the "Yaming Square Pot" pioneered by Wang Yinchun, and so on. Mr Han Meilin also designed many pots with his own personal style. In the 1990s, China's outstanding painters, Tang Yun, Luo Guixiang and other senior collectors, or some literati, also made indelible contributions to the modeling of the teapot in the old factory. Artists in the old factory benefited from the extraordinary aesthetic taste of their predecessors and the communication with ceramists all over the world, and cultivated excellent aesthetic vision in plastic arts.
medieval
"Old factory teapot" is mostly made by old factories and workshops that make high-grade pots. New artists have to graduate from ceramic school for three years before they can enter the workshop. The so-called "refined" and "old" means refined and old, while "Tao" is based on skillful techniques, which can skillfully play the techniques just right, in short, the works are in place. An excellent pot maker, in the whole pot-making process, uses a series of techniques, such as beating the barrel, horizontal flow, loading the handle, using "bright needle" and so on, and flows freely. The pot in the old factory is most questioned by the so-called "rough workmanship".
In fact, the thickness of workmanship is quite similar to the difference between meticulous painting and natural freehand brushwork. Take Shi Dabin as an example. His disciple, Xu Youquan, is recognized to be more meticulous in his work than Shi Dabin, so that many dignitaries at that time thought that Li and Xu were better than Blue in shine on you, but Xu Youquan pointed out objectively and fairly in his later years: "My essence is not as rough as it was then." In her later years, Cheng Shouzhen specialized in playing football, antique, and some even had crooked handles. Even Gu Jingzhou, the most famous contemporary artist, thinks his works are rough, but they are rough but magnificent. In today's famous pot makers, it is difficult to find a "freehand brushwork" master like Cheng Shouzhen. We don't deny the unique skills of skilled craftsmen. Pot skills, such as tycoons, are indeed extraordinary and impressive. I just want to tell the pot friends that many old artists in the "Old No.1 Factory" grew up with the help of pot masters. Only in these old pots can we see the diversity of workmanship. These seemingly "rough work" pots are far more traditional than most seiko pots today, with more mechanical processing or process improvement. Beautiful decoration
The teapot decoration in the old factory represents the basic style of the old factory. The lettering in the decoration relies on China's calligraphy and painting art, and the sand mixing and mud painting are the original creations of Yixing Potters, which are beyond the reach of other Potters. For example, the seemingly simple "sand adjustment", the old factory does have a unique technique, manually inlaid a yellow coarse sand into the clay pot, making it dense and orderly, naturally like inadvertently seeing the stars in the cloud. When the old factory was renovated, there was a special lettering team, such as Xiaoshi. Many calligraphy and paintings in the teapot were made by famous artists today. Ren Ganting's influence can be seen from his study. Even the simplest line decoration, which part of the pot body is just right, is finally finalized after repeated attempts and scrutiny by famous artists. Suitable kiln fire
1973, the old factory invested by the state built a new tunnel kiln, using heavy oil as fuel. In order to prevent the impurities in the oil fume from invading the pan surface, all the pots are put into pots made of high temperature resistant materials after embryo formation. Purple mud is about 1 100 degrees, and red mud is about 960 degrees. The kiln temperature is stable. After the flameout, the pot in the pot will still cool slowly in the tunnel kiln for more than ten hours. Therefore, the color of the pot water after firing is excellent. This kiln was praised as "official kiln" by pot collectors of old factories at home and abroad, and was destroyed in 2002 due to pollution and soaring oil prices. As for purple sand, the Ming and Qing emperors did not build a kiln for purple sand except the "old factory tunnel kiln" since ancient times. The teapot given by Deng Xiaoping to former Japanese Prime Minister tanaka kakuei, and more than 20 pieces of purple sand ware exhibited by Ziguangge earlier were all fired in the tunnel kiln of the old factory. Perhaps in another hundred years, it is not impossible for the writers of purple sand history to list the purple sand pot of the old factory as the only "official kiln pot". Make good tea
Tea is a Swiss grass between Chinese medicine and food. As long as we think that today's Chinese medicine is cooked in a casserole and in a casserole or soup, the principle is exactly the same. The teapot in the old factory is fired at one time, unlike the current firing process, which is mostly fired many times after the whole mouth. The first firing retains the best two-way permeability and tea-benefiting activity of the teapot (of course, the biggest regret is that the lid of the teapot is not tight enough), so the teapot in the old factory can brew delicious tea, with pure soup color and mellow tea flavor, which neither takes away the tea fragrance nor the taste of boiled soup. It is the best practical appliance for making tea and the first choice for tea lovers.