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Zisha Pottery
Zisha Pottery

A story on Chinese yixing teapot–A REAL TEA POTPOURRI; COLLECTABLES

IAN BERSTEN is a man obsessed. His particular passion is tea. He says he drinks more than half a litre a day. The scope of his passion is on show for all to see at an exhibition at Elizabeth Bay House, entitled Taking Tea.
Bersten believes he has one of the most comprehensive and eccentric collections of teapots and teataking para-phernalia in the world.
The difference between his collection and other serious collections of tea things is that Bersten is not necessarily obsessed with quality, aesthetics and refinement. “You’ve got to recognise my historical interest. I am really interested in technological evolution of the teapot,” he says.
Charting this evolution has led him to buy some weird and wonderful teapots that other collectors, who may avidly acquire, say, a William IV London silver inverted baluster shape with a scalloped pedestal foot, or a Meissen painted porcelain teapot, would not touch with a mote spoon.
One of the gems that Bersten owns is an Australian shearers’ teapot crudely but sturdily constructed out of galva-nised iron. This hard-working, practical pot stands about 37.5 centimetres high. Inside is a long cylinder, punctured with holes the size of a roofing nail, to contain the leaves. He bought it three years ago at the Antiques Fair at the Sydney Showground.
At the other end of the spectrum is a rare 19th-century Chinese teapot in the shape of two small barrels separated by a vertical perforated wall. This style of pot was developed in the Hsi Shing province of China.
The one which Bersten has on display is made from a fine, chocolate brown ceramic with a matt finish. He is proud to say that he owns three such pots -the tea museum in Hong Kong does not even have one.
The paradox of his collection is that while he has assiduously sought out eccentric teapots in an attempt to cata-logue tea-making innovations, the more teapots change the more they remain the same.
This, he explains, is because tea making is an essentially simple process. “The fundamental premise is that you put your tea leaves in a pot and pour boiling water over them,” he says.
“And because it is basically as satisfactory today as it was in the 18th century, I could take any of these pots on dis-play and show them to a tea drinker in London in 1705 and he would be able to identify it as a teapot. There has been no major innovation that has stuck.”
To demonstrate the consistency of the principle, he crooks his little finger under the handle of a pot and dangles it aloft. “You notice that when I hold it like this the teapot falls to the vertical, with the spout side down?The reason for that is that the leaves sink to the bottom and when you pour the tea, the pot is designed to let the leaves slide off the bottom of the pot so the water still flows over them and picks up the flavour.”
This fundamental design hasn’t stopped makers tinkering with refinements and trying innovations, not to mention using all sorts of different materials, from the finest porcelain to pewter alloys (commonly called Britannia metal)to glass.
The slight modifications and the embellishments are the heart of Bersten’s collection. For instance, there is the Cadogan teapot, named after Lord Cadogan, which is actually filled from the bottom and has a tube that delivers the brewed tea to the spout when the pot is turned the right way up.
Bersten shows me another variation on the theme designed by David Lindo, who discovered in 1881 that tea sank and reasoned that the strainer ought to be located at the bottom of the pot. His resultant design looks decidedly odd to modern eyes accustomed to seeing the strainer at the base of the spout.
When I ask why Lindo’s innovation didn’t catch on, Bersten says it just didn’t give the design an edge in the market place. But it did inspire another commercial development.
“If you can bring the novelty to the table so that everyone can see it, then you can sell it,” he says.
The novelty built onto Lindo’s design shows up in Royle’s Patent Self Pourer of 1886. This pot has a pump built into its lid so that instead of pouring the tea, you pump it out. The Royle did actually sell in large numbers.
Another gem is the SYP, or Simple Yet Perfect, teapot which also has an aristocratic connection. It was developed by the Earl of Dundonald. In the SYP, the tea is brewed with the pot on its back. You put the tea in a compartment, pour in the water, put on a lid which seals the section, and let it brew. When you are ready to pour the tea, you turn it on to its base, trapping the tea leaves in the top.
Bersten hasn’t paid out fortunes for his pots but he has been prepared to travel widely in pursuit of the unique. When he is in Europe, his weekend flea-market itinerary can cover Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Germany and France.
He says he can’t drive through a country town and not stop to browse through the antique and secondhand shops. Now that’s an obsession.

About the Author

Offers handmade yixing teapots,also called zisha teapot, is known as the best in Chinese teapots or China teapots, and accessories from Yixing,China.

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