We’ve been working for the past few months with some potters in Yixing to make jars for tea storage. The shape is modelled after a Ming Dynasty tea jar - beautiful in its elegant lines and generous curves.
We knew this Duanni clay made lovely tea - it's a batch of clay we've used before for making our Fangxia Duanni teapots. It's a pure ore - with no additives, something that's not so easy to find - even more so in a tea jar. These were fired four times in a tuiban gas kiln - where in each firing the jars are slowly moved through the kiln over a period of 24 hours, ensuring even, steady firing.
It's still early, and it will be interesting to see how the teas change over the course of years, but in our tests so far, both the Zini and Duanni jars seem to be working well for storing tea and "waking up" the tea from newly broken tea cakes. The teas stored in the jars seem to become more smooth and rich.
