Dearest Friends, all our Craftsmen and Artists, brothers and sisters in olives🙇♀️🙇♂️🌿saving our common tea culture, are proud to present to you their latest colleagues, Craftsman Wang Hui and Craftsman Shi Yun. Both are former course mates of our Craftsman Yi Xiao Ran! :-D whom you have seen in her video on our main homepage showing the craft involved in making a Fully-Handmade ZiSha Work.
Both these ladies Wang Hui and Shi Yun, are past colleagues of Craftsman Yi Xiao Ran, and upon her convincing, have joined us as well in early 2024 with the joint commitment to preserve Fully-Handmade ZiSha Art! Yes! Both Senior Craftsmen Wang Hui and Shi Hui are here now with RealZiSha to SERVE ALL OF YOU!
Craftsman Wang Hui continues to delight us after her amazing Qiu Shui, and now continues to bewilder us with the gutsy effort to create a largish Si Ting 思亭! wit with an exquisite, beguiling and elegant model, of high difficulty, the Si Ting 思亭.
~~~~~~~~~
思亭, Si Ting,
This is Xiao Mei Yao Zhu Ni, as we all know, with the highest shrinkage together with Zhao Zhuang Zhu Ni compared to all other ZiSha types. Failure rates are high. Unpredictability of the clay edges and joints, due to this high shrinkage is scary to say the least, attempting such a delicate model this Si Ting.
Si Ting has always been a model of high difficulty, especially for Zhu Ni.
Reasons are many.
The most difficult is the patting of this SINGULAR pasty clay slab that is Xiao Mei Yao Zhu Ni, from one part into two parts with WIDE disparity in girth. Crafting so is demanding on one's experience and skill, as this pasty clab slab may crack during its patting. The curves must all be cohesive as well and there should not be any turning back. What we take for granted, the extremely graceful and svelte silhouette, is the fruit of the Craftsman's labour, great eye of aesthetic as she works, and years of experience gained crafting with Xiao Mei Yao Zhu Ni.
Si Ting, being of a form whereby:
1) the form above AND below the widest girth, narrow inwards,
2) the lid has a highly extended dome above the tea water when filled to the brim.
These mean that Si Ting is a shape that houses less volume that its visual estate would suggest on our tea table. This is in direct contrast to the Jing Zhou Shi Piao and Han Wa, which houses maximum volume for the lowest visual estate.
What this means in turn, is that, to craft a Si Ting to house 195ml of volume, it has to be crafted rather large! With huge expanse of clay to be worked carefully on, bearing in mind it is rather pasty.
Dearest Friends, if you are with us long, and walk and talk with many Artists and Craftsmen alike, they all will say this, "大朱泥品，非常不好做。", meaning that the task of crafting large Zhu Ni pots is not to be trifled with, for many finished pots from the workbench WILL FAIL during firing.
Here, this Si Ting with a largish volume of ~195ml, is really a large Zhu Ni work of immensely high difficulty.
We really want to kowtow and thank Craftsman Wang Hui for again, for amazing us with her latest effort, this ~195ml Si Ting. What a great feat. An average of Two in six getting through firing is common, and here we have one preciously brought to us by dear Craftsman Wang Hui! Please cherish this dearly, extremely dearly.
As with all Art pieces from RealZiSha here presented to all of you dearest Friends, guardians of Fully-Handmade ZiSha Art, they are premium pieces availed at the most astounding lowest prices. We want you each of you friends to get the best. You deserve it.
~~~
TRULY FULLY-HANDMADE AND DELICATELY MADE ZHU NI WORK:
Note on our TRUE Fully-Handmade Zhu Ni pots from RealZiSha: NOT those thick-/irregular-thickness-walled ones which are actually fake "Fully-handmade ZhuNi pots" utilising the cheating new technology: "车一刀 Che Yi Dao": Such ZhuNi pots utilizing Che Yi Dao process, have been sprouting up in the market since early 2022. Che Yi Dao involves a swivelling-rotational cutter that goes around a roughly-finished ZhuNi pot to cut the outer surface into a perfect shape. This cutter obliviates the need of accomplished skill of a true Fully-Handmaking Craftsman. Obviously, Che Yi Dao also absolves the need of a skilled FHM Craftsman to 1)pound the slab into a careful thin-slab, 2)paddle-pat the slab into a uniform shape purely manually.
In the utilisation of Che Yi Dao cutter, the worker will just need to 1) roughly pound the slab into a slightly thicker slab. After that the worker rounds up this slab as part of the main body, and will just 2)need to ROUGHLY paddle-pat it into shape. After which he sets up the Che Yi Dao cutter to revolve and cut the body into a perfect shape.
Of course, rest assured here, and avoid the ubiquitous fake jigger-machined fake "Xiao Mei Yao Zhu Ni", "Zhao Zhuang Zhu Ni", "Zhu Ni Da Hong Pao", etc pots all around sold in a multitude of places, sites, apps and platforms.
~~~
