The Procedure of Zi Sha Making

There are four major steps of Zi Sha making procedure: Preparation, molding, heating and post-procession. The labor is well divided.

1. Preparation:
a. Preparing the clay:

First the clay was exploited from the mine. The city of Yixing is the major resource of the Zi Sha clay. When the clay is just exploited from the mine it is
called the raw earth, looks like a piece of rock. The raw earth will air slake naturally and be broken and grinded, then sifted by fine sift. The sifted clay
will be refined either by machine or by hand. However, the refiner will usually break the structure of clay thus decrease the quality, therefore the best
clay is attained manually.

b. Preparing the tools:

Zi Sha makers are always trying to invent new tools. Here only list some very essential tools: Work bench, clay pad and stick (to pad and strike clay so that
it can be molded), knives, lathe (to make round clay pieces), thread (to make line decorations on the pots), horn scratcher (to polish the surface), etc.

c. Design:

Before making the tea pot the craftsmen draw a draft, sometimes a mould is produced after the design. The mould can be used to duplicate the product quickly.


2. Molding, or making the tea pot with clay:

The tea pot can be molded by a mould or totally manually. When it is molded manually, the procedure is different from what we do in the common pottery
workshop:

a. The clay is padded into clay sheet with a even thickness.
b. The workers assemble different pieces of clay sheets together to make the body of the tea pot.
c. Make the handle, lid and sprout, then install the handle and sprout to the body.
d. Artistic treatment of the tea pot.
e. Add the decoration, such as carving and painting.


3. Heating:

The tea pot will be firstly dried in the shade, which takes about two or three days.

The tea pot is then put in the holder and placed in the kiln. It will be heated under a temperature between 1200-1400^oC.

4. Post procession:

Many Zi Sha pots need to be waxed, polished or gilded after the heating procession.

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