Friday, January 9, 2009

Shrinkage in Zhuni Pots

I know zhuni shrinks a lot, but I never realized how dramatic it really is. A picture I took in Yixing illustrates this more succinctly than I ever could in words. On the right is the raw zhuni pot and on the left is the fired one. They are from the same mold.

I was talking to a potter who told me fake wrinkles were made on zhuni pots by pressing toilet paper onto the unfired clay. Below are pictures of the toilet paper supposedly used to fake the wrinkes.

Toilet paper texture


This toilet paper is a lot different than what I grew up with and is not super soft. I thought other Americans might not understand using toilet paper to fake zhuni, but it really does remind me of zhuni wrinkles.

Toilet paper packaging

2 comments:

toki said...

Toilet paper! ha, thats a classic : )
Beautiful clay you got there, and those Jade Yueyee are nicely crafted (the line have rounded edges) me like....
And where are you at when you took these? Cheers - T

LaoChaGui said...

I was in an Yixing shop on Jiefang Rd. in Dingshan. He specializes in all kinds of Zhuni. I bought some "Dahongpao" pots from him, mostly because I like the color, and they are heavy and dense.