My first teapot

This is the first teapot I bought in Singapore. I bought it in an emporium at a cost of 7 dollars. That was in 1984.

The teapot has a lion on the cover. I bought it solely for the purpose of brewing Chinese tea in it. At that time, I had no idea that there was so much to learn about Yixing teapots and so many things to discover regarding the history and culture behind these Yixing wares. I As I needed a pot to brew tea, I just picked up one from the Emporium.

Then I met my colleague who was a teapot fanatic. I used to drink good puerh tea in his office and saw his collection of fine antique Yixing teapots. I began to learn more about Yixing teapots, the history, culture and the value behind these unglazed pieces of pottery. He had collected hundreds of teapots, mainly made in the republic time and some were from the Qing dynasty. As a beginner, I had the opportunity to see and touch some very fine teapots apart from sipping fine puerh tea of the 50s and even earlier. I also bought a couple of antique pots from him and some puerh cakes.

Other than this lion pot, I had another lion pot which had a ball filter inside. As these are big pots, I usually made a big pot of puerh tea and the tea could quench my thirst for the whole afternoon. In early days, big teapots were definitely suited for brewing puerh tea since this tea was consumed in large quantity. As fine and aged puerh tea is getting very expensive, big pots are not recommended as too much tea leaves is required to fill up these pots. As a norm, people normally fill the pot 1/3 to 1/2 full, large teapots will become a burden as they burn up your stock of fine tea quickly (just like a 2.5 litre car that burn up your costly petrol). With some small teapots, other people will measure 8 to 10 grams of tea to be brewed in the pots.