-look at purple sand through the fog.
On May 10, 16, at the auction of Yi Song Pavilion, a private collection of Qing Dynasty in Guardian China, the stone ladle pot made by Gu Jingzhou was sold for 6,543,800 yuan, which was the first time that Yixing Zisha ware exceeded 10 million yuan. As a result, many people cheered, as if they had won the lottery of10 million yuan, and they were excited about the famous teapot in Gu Jingzhou.
Almost at the same time, in May of 20 10, CCTV exposed the fact that some unscrupulous purple sand manufacturers used chemical raw materials to make pots and exquisite purple sand castles. This hot and cold suddenly pushed the purple sand industry to the public. As a result, some people worry that the purple sand industry will collapse overnight like the stock market. In fact, in the face of this ancient art that has lasted for hundreds of years, it is unnecessary to be overly excited and frightened.
Because the appreciation of Mr. Gu's pot does not mean that the famous pot in your hand will appreciate. After all, the amount of pots made by Mr. Gu himself is limited, and with the death of Mr. Gu, it has also embarked on a process of gradual reduction; However, the number of pots named after Gu Jingzhou is infinite, and they spread with the death of Mr. Gu Lao. I believe that with the appearance of this expensive Jingzhou stone ladle pot, there will be more and more pots with various names of Mr. Gu, and more and more pot stories about Mr. Gu will become more and more exciting.
Although the chemical pots and fake teapots produced by unscrupulous manufacturers have become large-scale, and sometimes they can even reach the level of chaos, after all, people who make pots with pure purple mud are still the mainstream in Yixing, as long as we practice a pair of discerning eyes to distinguish which ones are real purple sand and which ones are fake purple sand. Those pots can be used, and those pots can only be used as ornaments? Those pots are practical and those pots are works of art? You will definitely enjoy the fun in the purple sand collection.
Usually, I like visiting local cultural markets, drinking tea in Zisha specialty stores, communicating with friends of Zisha teapots, and discussing with the authors of Zisha teapots. I also often browse some articles of Zisha professional forums on the Internet and read many theoretical books on Zisha. Based on my understanding of the current situation of purple sand industry, I think there are the following problems in purple sand collection.
First, the old pot has few resources, which is really fascinating.
Many people who are new to the purple sand collection team like to follow the picture. I often see some Tibetan friends around me, saying that they must be from Shi Dabin, Chen Mingyuan and Gu Jingzhou. Some people specialize in the so-called pot of the Cultural Revolution. They don't have much professional knowledge and practical experience, but they only recognize money and don't recognize pots. Vendors grasp the mentality of some collectors and produce on demand. There are even many counterfeit ones. These pots are often tacky and have strange shapes. Most of them are farmers in Hebei, Henan, Shandong and other places, using ordinary loess, turning over the mold and firing at low temperature. The texture is the same as brick. In order to create a historical style, you are often lured into the urn by smearing shoe polish, dipping in ink and baking in the oven.
When I first liked teapots, I saw a small teapot in the shape of a smoking doll at a booth in the cultural market. The braid on the back of the head is bent into a handle, the cigarette in the mouth is a spout, and the hat on the head is a lid. The shape is very strange, and the stall owner charges 70 yuan. I bought it for 30 yuan. When I get home, I want to tidy up and make a pot of tea. As a result, ink floated out after three pots of water. By the time the ink was washed away, the small pot had revealed the nature of Tukla like a depilated chicken.
Once when drinking tea in a pot shop, an old man excitedly came in from the stall with a cone. The shape is quaint and the color is antique, which is quite similar to the classic style in Old Pot Atlas. The old man asked the shopkeeper to help him identify it. The shopkeeper only asked him to smell the pot again. The old man really smells of shoe polish again. I'm just surprised that I noticed it when I bought the pot. There is a simple reason. At that time, the old man was confused by the mentality of leak detection, and a little cheap mentality interfered with his judgment.
These shoe polish pots and ink bottles are often cheap and belong to shoddy fakes. Sellers are afraid of getting into subsequent troubles and set up stalls. Generally, they don't talk and pretend they don't understand. As you can see, Jiang Taigong is fishing, and whoever wants to take the bait. In this case, if you buy it back, even if you understand it, you can only have bitterness in your stomach and blame the seller.
The slightly advanced ones are used as old ones, using authentic purple sand materials. As for the pot, although it is molded, it is very stylish. In order to make the pot feel old as soon as possible, sometimes the pot is put into a jar filled with tea and exposed to the sun for several weeks, so that the soil tire of the new pot is loose and the internal heat of the new pot is removed, which is more like an ancient pot. Some highly imitated ones will be watered with real tea soup every day for several months. This kind of real tea soup is often expensive, and the shopkeeper made up a story seriously, which is the easiest to be fooled.
Once, a small pot seller received a big antique pot in Gu Jingzhou style from a booth, which was in good shape and clay. He inexplicably told me: I have steamed, boiled, brushed and soaked this pot. How come now, as long as it is filled with water, there will be oil flowers floating out. I laugh that this pot is probably stewed with sparerib soup, which is the old way.
Generally, people who sell old pots will make up a tortuous story, put a fake old pot next to everyone, pretend to be a legend in the Jianghu, and get the identity of a concubine or maid. It is the easiest to fool laymen who only recognize names but not celebrities. Therefore, people who have certain appreciation knowledge should not easily set foot in the field of old pots.
Second, rural blank pots are cheap and unsightly, so they should be used carefully as drinking fountains.
The basic mud of purple sand is actually a general term for purple mud, section mud and red mud. Then it becomes "five-colored soil" by mixing mud, and other colors can be mixed as needed, which is also the charm of purple sand mud. The change of clay and sintering will cause the color change of the pot. For beginners, purple sand soil is difficult to identify from the appearance, and it is easy to fall into the trap of fake purple sand soil.
The so-called rural green pot refers to the mineral soil taken from around Yixing purple sand vein and added with chemical dyes to make several defective purple sand pots that can be confused. In order to reduce the cost and improve the appearance, some unscrupulous businessmen use ordinary clay, which is not the raw ore of Dingshu Zisha, to add lead oxide or manganese oxide, and to add colorants to make the pot produce various color changes, or use chemical raw materials such as cobalt oxide and manganese oxide to make new mud colors such as dark green mud and black purple mud. In this way, these so-called teapot, not only lost the proper permeability of purple sand, at the same time, because of the high lead content, long-term soaking and drinking, will also cause certain harm to the human body. At present,1teapots sold in 0 yuan and 20 yuan are mostly of this kind. They are not sharp tools for making tea, but have become tools for hurting people, not to mention the appreciation of the collection.
The so-called "all made of pure purple sand" liner of the "beautiful teapot" recently exposed by CCTV is actually made of various common clays such as earth, red soil, black mud and white mud, and dyed with chemical raw materials such as "iron red powder" and manganese dioxide, which is exactly the same as the liner of a chemical kettle.
Some sellers of chemical pots will teach you some good ways to identify teapot, such as scraping the pot body with matches. If a match can be lit, it is a good pot. Or put the pot on the ground and step on it. If it is not easy to break, it is a good pot. This theory often becomes the selling point of some tourist attractions. On one occasion, when we traveled to Suzhou, the tour guide took us to a teapot exhibition place and was instilled with the above theory. Later, the tour group entered a teapot shop in downtown Suzhou. One of my colleagues insisted on knocking on the lid and stepping on the pot, which scared the boss to invite us out as pagans.
As the saying goes, you can't buy real things at a high price, but you can't buy pure teapot with the money for bricks and tiles. I once heard a stall owner complain that a craftsman's first-class bamboo pot was lost in his booth, worth more than 200 yuan! Others believe that because they don't read books or newspapers and don't understand the market, their horizons are limited to small circles.
Third, there are many mold pots, waiting for appreciation for 10 thousand years
From the point of view of molding, teapot can be mainly divided into three categories: full manual, semi-manual, grouting pot (mold pot).
Grouting pot, also called mold pot, is a kind of pouring mud into a mold. After the mud is dried, it can be made into pots, cups, sculptures, flowerpots and so on. It is suitable for mass production, high yield and good mud, and can be used as a vessel for making tea, but it has no collection value.
The main components of a teapot are: the body, spout, lid, handle and dripping water. That is, all parts of the pot are made into prototypes by hand, then put into their own molds for shaping and standardization, and finally "pieced together" into a pot by hand. The pot made in this way is called a semi-manual pot. Semi-manual pot is also formed by means of mold, so when the grouting pot is only called grouting pot, the semi-manual pot is called mold pot. Semi-manual pot making is allowed, sometimes the craftsman's skill can't reach the level of full manual pot making, and sometimes the shape of the pot is complex, which depends on the specifications. This pot-making method requires some skills, but it is simpler and faster than making the same pot by hand, so the price is relatively cheaper than the handmade works by the same author. The so-called handmade pot means that all parts of the pot are made by hand, and then "pieced together" into a pot by hand. All-handmade pots are also called traditional handmade pots. Because each pot is devoted to the author's hard work and has its own personality, it is of course the most collectible, which is also the hot spot sought after by purple sand collectors at present. However, people all over the world are eager for profit. Once the all-manual technology is sought after, many works imitating all-manual are born like mushrooms after rain. For example, the inner wall of a handmade pot can be embedded with a chapter, and some people think of using a soft rubber chapter to embed it. When a handmade pot hits a lump of mud, it sometimes retains mud stool marks, and some people use thick paper such as toilet paper to press it. In fact, whether it is a mold pot, a semi-handmade pot or a handmade pot, as long as the mud is pure, it is a good instrument for making tea. But if it's a collection, it's best to choose those works that have personality, small quantity and are all hand-shaped. This requires us to forge a pair of discerning eyes, and find out the most suitable price-performance ratio among all handmade pots, semi-handmade pots and mold pots.
Fourth, Li Kui jy and Gui Li join hands, and the true and false masters walk side by side.
If you want to use teapot as a collection or investment product, then celebrity teapot should really be a good choice. But now the purple sand world is full of hype and lies. The names of masters and celebrities abound, and the good and the bad are mixed.
The real master of making pots should be the mainstream of purple sand industry. Their works are the most worth collecting, but the prices are also staggering. There are also real masters who don't make pots, fly all over the sky every day, and their works are still being mass-produced, which makes people wonder: did his pots be made on the plane or on the train? For those casting pots, even if there are famous models of masters, their value has already been greatly reduced.
There is also a fake master who really makes pots. In today's purple sand industry, there are many systems for evaluating professional titles, and there are also local, national and enterprise levels. There are often senior engineers in this system, who may be the arts and crafts artists of that system, or even employees. Even if it is a formal promotion system, it does not rule out some factors such as activity ability, heredity and background. Just like our major, we are also professors, and the level is very different.
The worst thing is that you meet a fake master who can't cook a pot. Some pot makers make pots with two knives or can't make pots at all. Buy someone else's pot and knock on your own name. Through publicity and packaging, using the media to create popularity, you can also become a celebrity. The success of these fake famous artists is inseparable from the fascination of many collectors with famous artists.
Therefore, the collection of teapot should not be superstitious about famous people. The pots made by famous people are not necessarily excellent, and not all famous pots are worth collecting at a high price. We should choose those craftsmen with artistic morality and potential as the focus and goal of our collection. You can't just look at the name, just the title. The professional title is not important, even can be ignored. The key is to look at the works, which will fully cultivate our appreciation ability. A pot, starting from the aspects of material, workmanship, modeling and spirit, abandons the origin and background, depending on the pot itself. Only the above four aspects meet their own requirements, is a good pot worth collecting.
Only works with superb skills can stand the test of years, and gradually reflect their value in the future, bringing collectors fun and economic returns.