Photo courtesy of gifrancis

There are many varieties in the teapots market such as teapots made of different materials, have different shape, and different quality. For the materials, there are 2 popular kinds of teapots today: Yixing sand tea pots, and China teapots.

Materials for teapots

There are teapots that are made from other materials such as plastic, glass, or iron, but these teapots began to loose their popularity because they can significantly change the taste of the tea.
We often heard people said “reserving fine china for important guests only..!” China teapots are made from the same material as the China plates in your house – porcelain. The whiteness of this material has 3 advantages:

-It gives a sense of simplicity and elegance
-People can design on the outer of the pot easily
-The whiteness pops up the color of the tea

The other popular type of teapots is the Yixing teapots. They can also refer to as sand teapots.
Often, the Yixing teapots are left with their original color, which is the mixture of red and brown. This kind of teapots often has beautiful drawing and design. Each teapot is a work of art on its own.

Why Chinese teapots are popular?

There are many reasons why Yixing teapots are still popular today. The soils that make the teapots have 2 qualities: slow in absorbing heat and highly resistant to force. Firstly, because the teapots absorb the heat slowly, only the bodies of the teapots are warm. The handles are still cool even when the tea is very hot.

Secondly, the teapots are hard to break. One of things you are afraid of is to drop the teapot. If it was white China teapot, it will scatter all over the ground. But if it was a Yixing teapot, it will not break. The material is very strong; it must take a massive force to break it.

Another thing that Chinese teapots notice that is that tea brewed in the Yixing teapot always have the same taste. Preserving the tea taste is one of the important qualities of a good teapot. Due to this particular reason, several other kinds of teapots lost their popularity.

How to choose teapot?

When choosing the teapots, there are several guidelines that you can look at to evaluate the quality of the teapots. There are more but here are some of the basic ones:

First, you can weight the teapot on your hand to see it is evenly distributed. The reason for this is that if it’s not, the heat will be transferred unevenly to the tea. It would make the flavor of tea inconsistent.

Secondly, you can smell the teapot to see if there is any weird smell. Dried tea leaves are very absorbent. Strong smells would definitely affect the fragrance of the tea. Weird smell would definitely ruin your tea drinking experience.

Third, you can check to see if the lid fits the teapot. This is quite important because if the lid is too big, it can fall off when you pour the tea. On the other hand, if it’s too small, the water will ooze out unexpectedly.

You can also check the flow of the water coming out of the teapots. If it flows smoothly, that’s a good sign. However, the mouth of the teapot is very easily damaged; check to see if there is any crack round the mouth of the Chinese teapots before buying it. There are 2 reasons for this. First, damaged teapot mouth can affect the flow of tea. Secondly, it can be disassemble and follow the tea into your cup. How would you feel if there is a piece of soil in your cup of tea? Not a nice experience, that’s for sure.

A little history on ancient teapots

When tea was first discovered in China, teapots were simple and crude. Until the Ming dynasty, well-designed and beautiful teapots became very popular. All of the teapots then were hand-made and often of very high-quality. These ancient teapots are made of a variety of materials like bamboo, iron, or agate. But those teapots gradually loose their places to Yixing and white China teapots.