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Oct 04, 2011
 teapot
by: peter

Hi Kurt,
This is an Yixing teapot. I do not know more about these than everybody here in Taiwan does. I'll tell you all I know, but here is a page dedicated to this pottery: https://www.chinese-antique-porcelain.com/yixing-pottery.html

Basically, as far as I know, ceramics' collectors don't collect this type of ware, usually. It is a completely separate, specialized section of ceramics. Although, ceramics collectors occasionally do have such items, if they did come accross something old, the real collectors are specialized in Yixing wares only. The problem is, with zisha and zhusha teapots from Yixing it is really difficult to know age, so ceramic collectors may not be that interested.

If the pot you have is 80 years old, then it was (1) very well cared for and, (2) probably never regularly used. The pots on the page given above are only a few decades old, but in heavy use. If they were over 100 they would look about the same.
If this pot had been used, there would be sediments around the mark as well as along the metal.
In my experience, no matter what type of vessel it is, whether the base material is ceramic, glass or other, as soon as it comes with metal braces it is suspect to be new, or made only for export. I have seen so many of these pots here, but never with metal bracings. Even Chinese collectors owning dozens and dozens of pots don't have such pots, usually. I suspect these pots with metal bracings are made especially for export, because the foreigners like them.
With Chinese tea the pots are normally filled to the brim with leaves and hot water. The water escapes from between the pot and the lid; the tea sediments will stain the pot if used over an extended period of time. That is why I feel the pot looks like new (or unused).

The people collecting Yixing teapots here are mostly those who also sell tea (tea shop owners), and tea enthusiasts who drink tea several times a day.
Yixing teapots are mostly made by individual artisans, and the value is usually decided by the mark, which decides when and by whom an item was made.

Now, there are hundreds or even thousands of tea artisans/artists in Yixing at any one time. I have seen a list of the master Yixing artisans in Chinese, but it contained only names of the last few decades. As far as I know there are no records containing all such names for anything older than vintage, or older than mid-20th century, I'm afraid. At least, I know of none.

This said, the Chinese text of the mark says the same as the English, on the mark. In addition, the street and area name is given. I tried finding the company on the Chinese internet, but I cannot find the exact same name.

Tung Chang seems to be a very common name and is used by many unrelated companies. The English "Company" doesn't exactly reflect the Chinese meaning here, which uses a term that normally certain types of premises use. Said simply, it "could" be a tea merchant, not sure though.

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