Qingyin Commemorative Teapot

The Qingyin is the best known of Yixing Factory Number One's early standard teapots. It is a red clay shuiping pot, made to hold six cups, with 請飲中國烏龍茶, "Please drink Chinese oolong tea," engraved on its body, and it takes its name from the first two characters. The originals were made in small numbers in the mid-1970s as export teapots, and the Qingyin has since become the most widely copied of the factory's red clay pots. As one collector puts it, not even one in a thousand pots sold as a Qingyin is authentic. This commemorative edition was made for the tenth anniversary of the Taiwanese magazine Puerh Teapot, as an homage to the original. Early factory pots are judged on five things: clay, design, craftsmanship, seal and firing. Each was matched to the original as closely as possible. The clay is early raw red clay from a Dingshan business owner's small private stock, with no chemical pigments added. The body, lid and spout were formed in the original molds, which took a long search to find. The pots were made under the guidance of Zhang Qinfen, known as Meiyun, who joined Yixing Factory Number One in 1966 and was one of the artisans who made the original Qingyin pots. Each is stamped with the seal the factory issued her for those pots, which she had kept for forty years, and each was fired over more than a day in the same type of kiln used for the originals. The marks of the originals were kept on purpose: tool and polishing marks left by hurried factory work, and a lid with a slight gap that clinks softly when the pot is rocked. Because the old clay is so limited, only a few hundred of these teapots could be made. The full story is told in "Finding the Path Back to Qingyin" in the Summer 2026 issue of Global Tea Hut. This teapot holds approximately 100ml. [split] A recreation of the famous 1970s Qingyin teapot