Tea is known as the "National Drink" in China. Drinking tea has long been integrated into many people's lives, becoming a daily "compulsory course". With the development of tea culture, the tea ware market has also grown, among which silver teapots are undoubtedly the most eye-catching.
On the one hand, it is the prominent noble attribute of silver teapots among tea wares. Since ancient times, they have been exclusive utensils for high-ranking officials and nobles, and even now, they remain a symbol of honorable status.
On the other hand, there is the functional attribute of silver teapots. The effects of silver ions in sterilizing, purifying water, softening water quality, and enhancing tea aroma have been continuously confirmed by modern science, which is why silver teapots are highly sought after by tea lovers.
Of course, as a fully handmade tea ware, the artistic value of silver teapots cannot be ignored either. Their forging craftsmanship has a millennium-long history. It is this ancient craftsmanship that makes silver teapots more than just ordinary tea utensils, adding historical, cultural, and artistic value. The hammering technique of pure handmade silver teapots appears particularly mysterious.
Today, we will take the She nationality's silverware forging craftsmanship—a representative project of China's National Intangible Cultural Heritage—as an example to explain how a handmade silver teapot is actually made.
Melting Silver and Making Plates
Once the design plan for a silver teapot is confirmed, the first step is melting the silver. The selected silver blocks are heated until melted, and then pressed into silver plates, which serve as the initial material.
The thickness of the silver plates varies. Generally, plain silver teapots use plates about 0.6-0.8mm thick, while those with chiseling or other complex crafts require plates of 1.0-1.2mm to ensure the pot body doesn't break during intricate work.
Of course, the thicker the silver plate, the more effort the artisan must expend. Because the finished teapot has strict standards for the thickness of the bottom and body, a thicker plate requires more hammering and time to meet these standards.
Hammering the Teapot Body
Cut the prepared silver plate into a circle. Using tools, hammer around the circle from the outside in. Once the bottom size is determined, gradually hammer the body part into shapes like a butterfly, bowl, cylinder, or sphere until the body is fully formed.
Next, switch to a small hammer to refine the initially shaped body. Using tools like rulers, measure and position the height and symmetry of the body, ensuring the arcs transition evenly and the whole body is round and symmetrical. These detailed adjustments are crucial to the teapot's aesthetic appeal.
Complex crafts such as hammered textures, chiseling, silver firing (enamel), and gold/silver inlay are also completed at this stage. When performing these complex processes, rosin must be poured into the teapot to prevent deformation. This is the means that best showcases the artistic sense of the silver teapot, but it also places higher demands on the artisan's skill level. Chiseling is not achieved overnight; it requires years of continuous practice by the artisan.
This step is the most important and difficult part of making a handmade silver teapot. Taking the She nationality's silverware forging craftsmanship as an example, this single step alone requires the use of dozens of hammers and chisels of various sizes, with the number of hammer strikes reaching an astonishing over 100,000 times.
Making the Spout, Ears, and Handle
According to the design plan, hammer the silver plate into the shape of a spout, continuously refining it until it is fully formed. Then, polish the spout and perform other artistic treatments before cleaning and setting it aside.
According to the design plan, shape the silver material into ear shapes, clean them, and weld them onto the shoulder of the teapot, waiting to be riveted with the handle.
Hammer the silver plate into a round rod, flatten the ends, use arc-shaped props to press it into the handle shape, and refine the details with a rubber hammer until formed. Hand-wrap it with cloth, rattan, and other materials. There is even a method of incorporating Fuzhou bodiless lacquer craft materials to make a lacquered handle, which provides heat insulation and highlights artistic value.
If peak industry techniques such as "One Sheet Hammering" or "Mouth and Ear Hammering" are adopted, the spout and even the ears are hammered out as one piece with the body during the hammering stage. This highest-difficulty craft in the industry can only be independently completed by a few experienced masters.
Lid Making
The teapot lid can generally be divided into two parts: the knob and the lid base. Draw a circle on the silver plate with a compass, hammer the edges inward to form the rough shape of the lid. Make fine adjustments to finalize the shape of the lid base, then proceed to grinding, polishing, and cleaning.
The knob can be said to be the finishing touch of the teapot. Nowadays, besides conventional silver, knobs are also made of jade, jadeite, agate, lacquer, and other materials, which are widely loved by teapot enthusiasts.
Drill a hole in the center of the lid base, and fix the knob by screwing it in. For aesthetic purposes, patterns such as chiseled designs are usually added where the knob connects to the lid base.
Welding
Setting aside the "One Sheet Hammering" and "Mouth and Ear Hammering" techniques, a silver teapot usually requires welding at the spout and the ears. Different from welding materials like iron and steel, the welding process for silver teapots is much more meticulous and particular. Not only is the solder specially made, but the welding method also has its own tricks. This ensures that the welded joints are firm, do not fall off, and do not leak. After grinding, the weld marks are almost invisible, blending seamlessly with the overall shape of the vessel.
Polishing and Cleaning
When some parts of the silver teapot are initially completed, there are traces of hammering and welding left by the tools. Sandpaper, grinding wheels, files, and other tools are needed to trim and polish from coarse to fine to achieve the ideal visual effect. This step is minute and tedious, requiring the artisans' patient and meticulous handling. The time required is often calculated in days.
After polishing, the final step is cleaning. First, use high-temperature fire to burn off the oxidation layer attached to the surface of the silver teapot, and scrub it clean with a copper brush; then boil it in dark plum (Wumei) water and scrub it with a copper brush to anneal it. Repeat the above operations multiple times, and finally rinse it clean with water.
Finally, rivet and fix the cleaned teapot body with the completed handle, and put on the lid. At this point, a complete, shining pure handmade silver teapot is presented to the world.
As times change, traditional crafts are dying out under the impact of modern technology. Products mass-produced by cold machines flood society with their uniform appearance. The more this is the case, the more precious handmade items infused with the artisan's hard work and the warmth of their palms become. This is true for silver teapots, and even more so for traditional crafts with thousands of years of history.
Pinruo Dao is willing to join you in spreading the millennial Chinese silver teapot culture.
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