Jinxi Yixing Purple Clay Museum

Jinxi Yixing Purple Clay Museum

During the Song Dynasty, people discovered a special type of clay that was distinct from ordinary varieties. Its grains were exceptionally fine, its texture remarkably firm, and its color a purplish-red hue unmatched by common clays—it was the finest of them all: purple clay, found only deep within a mountain range in Dingshu Town, Yixing. The birth of purple clay teapots has an important connection to the tea-drinking culture of the Yixing region. By the early Ming Dynasty, under the admiration of literati in the Jiangnan area, the art of purple clay teapot crafting gradually emerged. These teaware pieces, integrating poetry, calligraphy, painting, and seal carving, became an essential part of Chinese tea culture.

The China Yixing Purple Clay Museum is located at the southern end of Shangtang Old Street. It opened to the public in May 2002, bringing together the finest purple clay works from China’s pottery capital, Yixing, to the ancient town of Jinxi. Visitors can explore the evolution of purple clay art—from rugged to delicate, abstract to realistic, exaggerated to lifelike. A notable piece is the purple clay statue of “Maitreya,” the future Buddha, and especially the giant “Dongpo Handle Teapot,” which exaggerates the design of the teapot used by the famous Northern Song Dynasty literatus Su Dongpo for boiling tea. This teapot, handcrafted from coarse clay, features hand-painted colors, and took over 200 days—from production to drying and firing—to complete. Weighing 1.5 tons, it can serve 2,000 people at once.

The exhibition hall displays famous purple clay teapots throughout history, including the prototype of the purple clay teapot—the Song Dynasty version—as well as the Ming Dynasty’s Shi Dabin Handle Teapot and Chen Ziqi’s Round Lamp Teapot, the Qing Dynasty’s Shao Daheng’s Piled Ball Teapot, and the internationally renowned “Mansheng Eighteen Styles Teapot.” There are also modern purple clay artworks such as painted pottery, Jun-style overglaze ceramics, and purple clay vases, many of which have won awards both domestically and internationally in recent years.

The museum’s display of the Dabin Handle Teapot stands alongside treasures of national significance, such as the Dabin-style Purple Clay Coated Lacquer Square Teapot from the Palace Museum and the Shi Dabin Hexagonal Purple Clay Teapot from the Yangzhou Museum. The Round Lamp Teapot by Chen Ziqi, a master of purple clay craftsmanship in the Ming Dynasty, is a fine example of early “figurative teapots.” The “Mansheng Eighteen Styles,” inscribed by Chen Hongshou (also known as Mansheng), one of the “Eight Masters of Xiling” in the Qing Dynasty, and crafted by Yang Pengnian—renowned as the “Purple Clay Artisan Family”—are treasured heirlooms in the world of purple clay.