🫖 Wagon Wheel Teapot ROC

🔎 This is the famous Giant Wheel or Wagon Wheel. The teapot can be from the period of the Republic of China, that is, from 1912 to 1949. It was then that these teapots gained wide popularity in Japan and Taiwan, where they are still very popular today.

⚱️ Handmade. The volume of the teapot is 70 ml. The shape of the spout is a cannon barrel, and the bottom is flat.

🧱 Purple clay Zi Ni, with a chocolate tint, is oily. Particles of yellow clay Duan Ni are mixed into the main clay.

⛏️ Not only the clay is interesting, but also its extraction and processing, since all processes were carried out exclusively by hand. Initially, laborers extracted the rock with picks and carried it in baskets to the assembly site, after which the master manually sorted the material needed to make the teapot. After selection, the sorted clay was piled up for weathering for a certain period of time, up to a whole season. Then it was crushed, sieved and water was added, after which the clay was kneaded with feet. The next stage was "clay training", that is, repeatedly beating it with a wooden hammer and folding it for aging for up to 6 months. Then the second training and making a teapot. This teapot is fired in a dragon tunnel kiln using wood or coal.

History

The origin of the Giant Wheel 巨轮 Ju Lun dates back to the end of the Qing Dynasty, when Yixing teapots were massively exported to Japan. Japanese aesthetics differed from traditional Yixing: there they preferred asymmetry and roughness, and appreciated imperfection and incompleteness. In the Japanese tea ritual, this form gained wide favor.

In contrast to the late Qing Yixing pottery tradition, which sought symmetry and refinement, the Giant Wheel has asymmetrical and uneven features, as well as deliberate simplicity. The products often show traces of touch and raw areas: the fine grinding is deliberately weakened or omitted. This approach exudes an aesthetic of incompleteness, imprecision, and instability, characteristic of the Japanese taste of the time.