Last weekend I spend in the company of several Yixing artists and Yixing
Ceramics Museum people at Po Zhou's ClayArt in San Jose.
(www.chineseclayart.com ) I believe I mentioned these guys couple of times
before.
The group visits the US regularly attending pottery seminars and
conferences, etc. and giving group lessons to everyone who can afford $18 a
day.
This time it was quite a bunch of heavyweights with Pao Jin Song (curator of
Yixing Ceramics Museum), professor Shi Go Fu, Dean of Ceramics Art Dept., at
Wixi Institute and an editor of ZiSha (Purple Sand) magazine published in
Taiwan. If that was not enough, he is a VP of YiXing Artisan Association.
After a friendly tea there was a live demo of zisha chahu making by famous
Cao Ming Ming of YiXing. It took her about an hour and a half to transfer a
block of yixing zisha into a small lovely chahu that, after firing, was
added to the collection of same created every year by visiting zisha artists
at ClayArt.
All the masters brought with them a good collection of their own work. My
favorite was a wide chahu made of black zisha with tall square handle by my
absolute favorite Ma ZiYuan. His works can be found in several ceramics
museums all over the world.

The material they used was the same that we discussed couple of weeks
before - zisha sold by the ClayArt. I expressed the concerns voiced by
Dominic about the authenticity of this zisha. Both masters and professor Shi
assured me that the zisha was 100% authentic and of very good quality. Then
to everyone's laughing delight I conveyed Dominics suggestion to GuangZhen
Zhou of ClayArt how to make more money on zisha sales. The Yixing guys said
that they prefer to make money by teaching and selling their art
internationally than becoming clay traders. They also said that if anyone
wants to resell yixing clay they will have nothing against it - just buy
cheap from ClayArt and become a millionaire.
I told them about our little internet group and they asked me to send their
very best to all rec.food.drink.tea guys and promised to start reading our
drivel. Somehow I doubt that they will

Pictures can be found at http://www.fotothing.com/biovirus/

Sasha.