Qing Yin Zhongguo Wulong Cha pots / tea boats

'贈品' just means promotional gift, or gift item.

Here is a picture I took in Yixing. They are all fake 请饮中国乌龙茶 shuiping teapots. But they had pictures of flowers on the back instead of the address off the xiangxing tea shop in HK. Did they have Qing Yin Zhongguo Wulong Cha pots with flowers on the reverse side as well?

A few seals / two pots from Tim... his are all surprisingly clean:

[Click to enlarge this one]

Yeah - can't comment one way or the other about the authenticity (other than the comment below). I've seen those horizontal tooling marks too; in fact, the most recently purchased one of mine (and the most convincingly possibly authentic one I have so far) has some very interesting marks inside. A couple of the ones I think are fakes also have these marks, and at first, I thought they were wheel thrown and thus probably Taiwanese imitations. But since then, I've decided they're probably just made on a small wheel of the sort used by Yixing potters, along with some small tools for smoothing the insides. Unfortunately, still haven't perfected my taking pictures of the inside of pots technique - I think you really need a good light box or hand light to pull it off, or a really good angle with natural light.

The maker's seal under the lid looks like the same name as a couple of mine (巧英). I think that style and that type of lid seal would probably be for an older pot if authentic, but I don't know that for sure.

The small indentation on the right of the seal is very common. Not sure if it's trying to imitate the wear on certain types of seals (wood ones) like this:

or if that was actually carved into some of the seals that were used. I've seen ones that are more clear, like this one:

Others have a slight indentation on the lefthand side:

[images hotlinked from the potsart forum; hopefully they won't mind]

Maybe they started out with a clear divet like that (on the right, near the bottom) and then started showing signs of wear with time.

Hard to tell in the pictures, but I think that a lot of the older ones (early-mid 70s) have the type of spout where only the top of the spout, not the whole line of the spout, is in line with the lid / handle.

I'm starting to give up on trying to ever completely authenticate pots like this (though I won't stop trying to learn more about them) -- they were made over a wide period of time, during a time period when quality control and consistency weren't big goals, they were originally mostly pretty low-grade commercial / promotional products, and according to Tim, they were made at at least 2 other factories besides #1 Factory.

I think someone with a lot of knowledge and experience could probably rule out a lot of pots that are floating around as probable or definite fakes. But as marshaln has pointed out, a lot of the fakes out there have been around for quite some time as well, and a lot of those are probably also made with pretty good materials.

Of course you might have noticed there 2 differnt seals of 22-letter (one started with 中國, one with 中国), a simplified one only came after late-80's and stayed til early-90's

Also, clay used were not only Hongni and Qing Shui ni, also Pin Liao (mixed clay) were used.

And Qing Yin Zhog Guo Wu Long with flower on the the side (has apricot, bamboo, orchid and chrysanthemum as a set), I heard it was ordered by some Fujian company, made to export (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, SE asia), during late-80 to early-90, clay used I saw were Hong Pin (Hongni and Zini mixed and are there other clays?)

chrl - I came across a set in Taiwan which the owner said he had stored himself since the early 80's.  He said he'd bought them in around 1982.  They were made of pure Zini (not Hong Pin), though I've seen the Hong Pin sets you mention.

Today I bought Qing Yin~ 6-cup Shui Ping (22-letter, traditional Chinese), mine almost looks the same as Tim's MACANUDO pot.

The seller said it's late-CR but from what I know, traditional Chinese version only came after early-80's, looks like Pin Zini I'm thinking it fixing for Shu

I'm also planning to purchase the same Hongni one for Yancha..not easy to find...

I love the clay too, very smooth on tea towel, relatively heavy which explains enough iron amount

Letter inside the lid says 公美

*clay is incredible, it currently tops the list of 'fastest seasoning clay', dropping Mo Lvni to no.2

I think it's due to the amount of iron, haven't seen clays as heavy as this so often..

I got what I believed to be one of these pots a little over a year ago, said to be 80s, xiao hong ni, and 80 ml, +/-. It's interesting because the Chinese on the side of the pot is completely different. The bottom seal is also very different. I tried to take representative pictures of each:

(Click here for a bigger version of the seal photo.)
[small image link corrected - wby]

There's also a number 8 stamped inside the lid, best seen in this picture here:

I didn't white balance the top two pictures at all, so the last one is most representative of the pot's true color.

Any opinions?

Most of my CNNP pots together:

I recently acquired this set, supposedly from the late 80s / early 90s, from a seller in Malaysia. The teaware matches the quality of the tea, which is to say, it's not high-end - the pot feels quite dry, and the writing on the dishes is fainter than on many examples I've seen. Is this fake, or just low quality stuff (I'm leaning towards the latter).

From the same seller, I also picked up a 4 cup size (~ 80 ml) hongni pot with the CNNP text on the front, a shanshui scene on the back, no lid seal, and 中國宜興 on the bottom. The pot appears almost to have been dipped in hongni slip - it's red both inside and out, but there's some brownish parts showing near the rim. Not sure if this one is real.

Two more pieces, from two different Taiwanese sellers.

4 cup (70-80 ml) zisha pot, in the style of the fairly early ones, though not sure about its provenance.

This is from when it was newish:

And this is it now:

This last one is a 'mei yun' (梅雲) lid seal hongni 6 cup pot, meaning it's in the style of a 70s one. The seller claims it's genuine.