Taiwanese teapot

When clearing some teapots, i found this teapot made in Taiwan in a plastic bag stuffed below the ceiling in the cornices of the apartment. As i do have a lot of small tespots and there is no place to display them in my apartment, i usually wrapped them in newspsper and put them  in plastic bags and stuffed the bags in the cornices below the ceiling. The newspaper used for wrapping the pots showed the date Jan 2011, it must have been 7 years since these pots were out of my radar.

Taiwan may not have the zisha clay, but the locals also make teapots and tea ware. They also like to brew chinese tea using Yixing teapots. They grow their very own chinese tea, usually the Goddess of mercy or kaoshan cha (tea from high mountain).

I bought this teapot even though i knew it wasn't made in Yixing. I liked its design, an unu7sually tall lid made the pot looked funny. After this purchase, i saw quite a nmber of similar pots appeared in the market. They were made in Yixing. Some were even made by craftmasters from Yixing. Its unthinkable that potters from these two rivarly nations shared the same inspiration in teapot designs. Otherwise, some could have copied the design from others. There is no copy right law in teapot designs, they all copied and learned from great masters of the past. Even Gu Jingxhou admited that he copied and learned from masters like Shi Dabin and Shou Dahen.

Taiwanese teapot and its maker

Other than this find, i also found a small teapot (suipin hu) hidden in the newspaper wrappings. This one is unique as the potter's name is inscribed under the lid. It is not any ordinary potter. The name suggests that it is quite a renown potter in Yixing, Zhou Tingfang. I bought this pot for about 10 dollars during those early days. Again, why i got attracted by this pot was because i had heard of the name Tingfang.

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Tingfang, mostlike Zhou Tingfang