Editorial Conversation: Chapter 10, Section 3: Dragon Kilns (龙窑)

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[00:00:05] Jason Cohen: Hello everyone. I'm Jason Cohen, the author of an Introduction to the Art and Science of Chinese Tea Ceremony. Today we're discussing book two, chapter 10, section two, Dragon Kiln. Here to talk about this chapter is our editorial team, Patrick Penny.

[00:00:18] Pat Penny: Hey. Hey!

[00:00:19] Jason Cohen: As well as Zongjun Li.

[00:00:21] Jason Cohen: My first question, what is a dragon kiln?

[00:00:24] Zongjun Li: It's a kiln that's made out of dragons' skeletons when they slay the dragon back in Song Dynasty. And they continue to build up this pile of legacy... I'm making things up.

[00:00:37] Pat Penny: That, that's why we see so many dragon motifs on cups across the dynasties. 'Cause it was another way to remember the dragons that had been slain and then their bones were used to make the kilns.

But dragon slaying aside, it's a elongated kiln that's built upon a slope. And so, if one uses their imagination, you can kind of see how it might be shaped like a long cylinder sort of like a dragon. And then I think another allusion to the dragon is that this has some kind of port or hole at the front where you're gonna be lighting the main fire. And air is gonna be moving through that port, bringing fresh oxygen, but also igniting and continuing to sustain the rest of the fires within the kiln. So it's kind of just looks like this fiery earth and mound that is a dragon.

[00:01:19] Zongjun Li: So legit fire breathing dragon.

[00:01:23] Jason Cohen: And so these kilns, these are specifically some type of climbing kiln that have usually multiple compartments, multiple sections, winding their way up a mountain slope.

[00:01:33] Pat Penny: Arms and legs of the dragon. That's what it is right there.

[00:01:35] Zongjun Li: And depending on the size, similar format, but exist in smaller size can be called a snake kiln or centipede kiln like, she yao (蛇窑), wugong yao (蜈蚣窑).

[00:01:47] Jason Cohen: What is the significance of a dragon kiln in Yixing?

[00:01:49] Zongjun Li: Well, for Yixing in particular, it was literally the only type of kiln that were used to fire wares for a very long time. Until, during the 18, 19th century, downdraft kiln and other formats of kiln are invented. But before that, and for thousands of years, dragon kiln was the only kiln that was used in Yixing.

[00:02:10] Jason Cohen: Only kiln used in Yixing for zisha wares.

[00:02:14] Zongjun Li: For zisha wares.

[00:02:15] Jason Cohen: Other types of ceramics, like, yijun (宜钧) and others could have been fired in other kilns.

[00:02:19] Jason Cohen: So when did dragon kilns arrive in Yixing?

[00:02:23] Zongjun Li: Northern Song Dynasty.

[00:02:26] Jason Cohen: But zisha wares didn't start until the mid-Ming approximately. So what were they doing with these dragon kilns before that?

[00:02:33] Pat Penny: Probably firing some other form of daily wares or earthen wares that might not have been what we see today as zisha, but could have been some kind of proto zisha that's using similar material but potentially not processed the same way that we know zisha ore to be processed today.

[00:02:49] Jason Cohen: And this is an interesting idea, right? That much of the technology that went into making zisha wares actually predates zisha as an independent art form within Yixing. In my mind, this seems to be something that is frequently either glossed over or not seriously considered that so much of the technology and so much of the work that went into the artistry that went into Yixing predates the independent art form.

[00:03:17] Pat Penny: That's a great point, Jason.

[00:03:19] Jason Cohen: Thank you, Pat.

[00:03:20] Jason Cohen: Can you give us a sense of scale? How big are these dragon kilns?

[00:03:25] Pat Penny: The one that you and I were able to fire wares in, in Korea, for example, which you have a picture of in the chapter. I might not be able to give you a precise measurement, but thinking back anecdotally to what I saw and experienced, it seemed to be maybe between about 15 to 20 meters or so, it was quite long, and you are moving up a hill. You really feel like you're walking some distance as you cover the length of the kiln.

[00:03:49] Zongjun Li: That was in Korea? Actually, yeah, I've seen that kiln too. It was with the Onggi master An Shi Sung.

[00:03:54] Pat Penny: Yep. Same kiln. And I think it looked very similar to what we saw when we were in Dingshu town. We went and saw the remaining dragon kiln that they used there.

[00:04:04] Zongjun Li: The only one that's still in use today, but historically in average Yixing dragon kilns are much longer. The average size is about 50 meters. And the longest one, that people can trace back with historical evidence is 70 meters, Pin Sheng Yao (品胜窑). (Errata: Not the longest by length though, it was the oldest dragon kiln in continuous operation for firing zisha, active from mid Ming dynasty to mid 20 century.)

[00:04:20] Pat Penny: That's a real dragon.

[00:04:23] Jason Cohen: These are huge, right? These are firing what thousands of wares at a time? Is that about right?

[00:04:29] Zongjun Li: Yeah, sounds about right.

Pin Sheng Yao, I read a little bit about the history of that kiln. It was actually built with three families. They set up a junction to establish this kiln, to produce wares mainly for exportation to Southeast Asia.

[00:04:45] Pat Penny: And you think about just how much effort it is to first of all gather the resources to fire, but then to actually maintain the fire. You would never underfill a kiln.

If you're going to fire, you're going to be filling that kiln. So it's certainly gonna be, even the ones that we've seen fire are hundreds to thousands of pieces and I can only imagine the really large historical ones being thousands to tens of thousands of pieces.

[00:05:08] Zongjun Li: Yeah.

[00:05:10] Jason Cohen: Pat, you brought up our experience with Onggi master An Shi Sung. We fired a dragon kiln together in South Korea and Zongjun, I believe you saw the kiln, but you did not,

[00:05:19] Zongjun Li: I did not participate in the firing. Yeah.

[00:05:21] Jason Cohen: So Pat, what was that experience like, firing the dragon kiln? It's similar enough to the Yixing kilns. Firing, also interestingly, unglazed wares, some of which were in saggers, onggi material.

[00:05:33] Jason Cohen: What was that like?

[00:05:35] Pat Penny: Sweaty? No, it was really special. It is intensely hot, being near the kiln.

We had the opportunity to shadow Mr. An Shi Sung. He pointed out to us some areas where we should add wood. And so we had the opportunity to help maintain the heat of the fire. And just getting close enough to one of the eyes to drop in like a chunk of a log, the amount of heat you're feeling, it's really hard to really even face the heat of the kiln. I felt like there's many times where I wanted to go put some fuel, wood into the fire. And I'm kind of like facing away, which I realize this is an audio medium and I'm doing the action, but I'm sort of facing away from the kiln while I'm trying to place the log into the hole.

So it really was so intensely hot and really quite, I can't only imagine ' cause we were only there for probably about six hours during the firing night. That is going for, I believe in the case of An Shi Sung's, it was 48 hours of firing before a cool down.

We were only there for six and I felt exhausted. And, part of those six hours was we made some nice Korean barbecue. But he always had his eyes on it and he always had a sense of what needed to be done with the kiln. We were just there to assist.

[00:06:44] Zongjun Li: Did you do the barbecue on top of the kiln fire or

[00:06:49] Jason Cohen: You took charcoal out of the kiln mouth. Formed charcoal, and barbecued on that. So yes,

[00:06:54] Pat Penny: It was awesome. I can't remember if we had Cass or Hite or Terra, but we had our meat and our beer and it was a great time.

[00:07:01] Zongjun Li: That was great.

[00:07:03] Jason Cohen: I too also remember being hot and uncomfortable and the difficulties in getting too close to the kiln.

One of the things that strikes me looking at those photos again, is that despite it being in the middle of the summer and 90 something degrees out, in order to approach the kiln, everyone was in full sleeves. We were wearing visors, full sleeve outfits, because you can get literally sunburned just from standing too close to the kiln. Not even a physical burn, but UV style heat burn.

And we talk about many of these things in abstract, particularly being more on the literati scholar, urban lifestyle for all of us. But then actually seeing the amount of work that goes into forming these things. The type of work that the collectors of Yixing teapots wouldn't have been doing during the dynastic period, it puts into perspective how much of a communal process and how many layers of civilization are necessary in order to actually even get to the point of consistently firing ceramics.

[00:08:05] Pat Penny: An Shi Sung, even though he's a singular potter, when he goes to fire that dragon kiln, I don't think it's ever just his wares and certainly it's never just him maintaining the fire. When we were there, I think there was two or three other gentlemen that were helping to maintain the kiln. I don't think he's firing that many times a year because it's such an effort. But it, it is always a community effort of multiple potters coming together to do that.

[00:08:29] Jason Cohen: I believe there's two or three ceramic artists who make other types of non-Onggi wares that he frequently works with that are always doing it. But if my memory holds, he fires only between once and twice a year.

[00:08:39] Pat Penny: That's what I remember too.

[00:08:41] Zongjun Li: What kind of fuel source do they use in Korea? Because in China they use pine.

[00:08:46] Jason Cohen: I believe it was also pine. The photos show long cut logs that look like pine to me.

[00:08:52] Pat Penny: I think even if I went back to my notes from 12 years ago, I don't feel that I actually asked the fuel source.

So,

[00:08:58] Jason Cohen: What type of work is that?

[00:09:00] Pat Penny: Things we've learned, in 12 years.

[00:09:03] Jason Cohen: We're gonna get there. Staying on this firing idea in Yixing, what was the sequence of firing and what are the sequences of firing a dragon kiln?

[00:09:12] Pat Penny: You gotta start with the warmup. Just like when you're going to the gym, you're gonna do some squats and deadlifts. You can't just pick up the heavyweight. That kiln needs to warm up. And the wares inside it need to warm up as well to really help reduce any kind of shattering or crackage. Both of the wares and of the kiln.

[00:09:26] Jason Cohen: That's something people don't think about is that the kiln itself is usually made of fired ceramic. Mix of brick fired ceramic. And so you have to preheat the kiln itself. So the kiln doesn't explode like a ceramic ware can.

[00:09:39] Zongjun Li: Yeah. And during the process, they usually would open all of the fire observation eyes to let all of the moisture content out when they slowly increase the temperature in the kiln. Because frequently these dragon kilns are constructed in coastal regions. So, it can be very, very moist during summer times and spring times.

[00:10:01] Jason Cohen: So the kiln warms up. You're firing, I assume, in the fire box.

It gets warm enough that you can start the primary firing, right?

[00:10:09] Pat Penny: Yeah. So you get into the feeding phase, which is where you've basically reached the maximum temperature that you're targeting and you're just trying to maintain that over the course of quite a long period of time. Depends on what wares you're firing, between 24 and 48 hours is not uncommon for this feeding stage.

[00:10:27] Jason Cohen: And the eyes of the kiln, these are open or closed during this feeding state?

[00:10:32] Pat Penny: To my understanding, predominantly closed. And then opened as necessary for feeding, so for adding fuel.

[00:10:38] Jason Cohen: And the fuel is actually going into not only the mouth of the kiln, but also into each chamber of the kiln.

[00:10:44] Pat Penny: To make sure that you've got an even temperature across all the wares that are being fired.

But if you also know that you have some slightly different wares in different spots of the kiln, not only stacked vertically by the use of saggers but also through the distribution of the kiln, you might be trying to add less fuel in one area, more in another to maintain a slightly higher or lower temperature.

[00:11:05] Zongjun Li: And traditionally people use pine as the main fuel source to fire the kiln. But during the temperature adjustment process, other fuel source might be used too, like bamboo or straws.

[00:11:17] Jason Cohen: And because those are less combustible?

[00:11:20] Zongjun Li: Yeah, less combustible.

[00:11:22] Jason Cohen: So they, they adjust the temperature less?

[00:11:24] Pat Penny: And not particularly for Yixing, but if you are firing wares where you're looking to get some kind of ash glaze, you could adjust your fuel source to make sure that the kind of ash that you want to be glazing is being created in the kiln.

[00:11:38] Jason Cohen: So we go through this 24, 48 hours. We're done with the kiln feeding or the primary firing stage, and then what happens?

[00:11:46] Pat Penny: Burn out. So you start to allow basically the fuel source to, to burn its way out. And then there's an adjustment of the eyes to maintain a slow and steady cool down, which can go also for 48 hours. Just needs to be really carefully managed to ensure that you don't have any sudden or rapid drops in temperature.

[00:12:09] Jason Cohen: And then you're done, after?

[00:12:11] Pat Penny: Well, you gotta go in and get all of your wares, right. There's still quite a lot of work to be done. But it's really a matter of reaching a temperature that, you know, is gonna be safe to go in and you're gonna ensure that all of your wares are able to be pulled out of the kiln.

[00:12:25] Jason Cohen: But then the cool down is another

[00:12:27] Pat Penny: Could be another two days, four days.

[00:12:29] Zongjun Li: A couple days really.

[00:12:31] Jason Cohen: Switching gears from this a little bit, how important is the fuel source used to fire the kiln?

[00:12:37] Zongjun Li: Well, traditionally people use pine because it contains a lot of resins and it's very, very combustible. It's very easy to reach much higher temperature than other fuel source. And, throughout hundreds of years of firing zisha using this fuel source, deforestation has been a problem.

So, really modern days people no longer use pine because these are protected trees and forest areas. And instead people use bamboo or sometimes they're straw. These fuel source produce actually much lower temperature than pine. And for what we have heard from people that have seen or used dragon kilns in Yixing using this type of fuel source, apparently the wares are much duller. It's not necessarily as sharp or bright as an antique Yixing that were fired in dragon kilns with a pine as fuel.

[00:13:28] Jason Cohen: So the quality of the wood sources declined over time?

[00:13:32] Zongjun Li: That's correct.

[00:13:33] Jason Cohen: And I believe that these alternative fuel sources produced a lot more smoke, more likely to mar the surface of the wares that were being fired inside the kiln.

[00:13:43] Zongjun Li: Yeah. Yeah. That's why the surface texture and color is much duller.

[00:13:49] Jason Cohen: Even while being protected by a saggar, the combustion is less complete. The wood is, or the straw is more moist. It doesn't carry the same type of thermal mass.

And so even if it's not directly been touched by smoke, it's still possible to determine the effects or ceramic artists in Yixing can still see the effects today.

[00:14:07] Zongjun Li: That's correct. That's correct.

[00:14:09] Pat Penny: It didn't seem when we were there talking to some of our contacts that any of them were particularly excited by the idea of firing in modern times in the dragon kiln. It seemed to be a burden that they all participate in on a once a year basis.

[00:14:23] Zongjun Li: It's more ceremonial. Interestingly, they told us that the majority of the wares gets fired in the Yixing dragon kiln, not made in Yixing. They're made by artists elsewhere across China. And they send their wares into Yixing and get fired in the once a year ceremonial firing.

[00:14:42] Pat Penny: Yeah, it adds a good couple hundred or thousand rmb to their selling cost.

[00:14:47] Jason Cohen: That's certainly worth discussing. Let's continue the conversation about fuel use and then we'll return to that topic because I think that there's quite a bit there culturally that's worth unpacking.

How well developed was the use of fuel? For example, were there different parts of the tree used in different stages of firing? How well controlled and developed was this practice?

[00:15:10] Zongjun Li: Usually the larger and denser trunk of the pine tree is used first. And then you use smaller parts of the tree.

[00:15:21] Jason Cohen: The firings in Yixing specifically, but China generally with dragon kilns is so developed that they actually use different parts of the tree at different stages of firing.

[00:15:30] Zongjun Li: Yeah. And not to mention even different materials of other fuel source when they're doing the fine adjustment of kiln temperature.

[00:15:38] Jason Cohen: And so you had mentioned deforestation and the great cuttings. How did the changes in availability of high quality fuel sources like this songshu pine affect the development of kiln technology in Yixing?

As the higher end pine trees were fell, and no longer available for use, what happened to firings? Did they just fire less? Did they...

[00:16:01] Zongjun Li: They use different materials or they switch to different types of kiln, like downdraft kiln and push back kiln. It's really interesting how the fuel source change inevitably that led to innovation of kiln technology. Because for regular size or average size dragon kiln, it frequently consumes over 6,000 kilos of fuel source. Sometimes more. On average, that's a lot of wood. And many other things use wood too, like building houses, building ships. In the dynastic period of China, wood is really everywhere.

So, that really led to a pretty severe deforestation starting from the north and moving down to the south. And it eventually impact the availability of fuel source for dragon kiln in Yixing. And that's how eventually other types of kilns are invented to reduce the requirement of a large amount of fuel being used for each firing.

[00:17:07] Jason Cohen: Wonderful. I think that this is a great answer. Kiln technology and ceramics firings particularly wood firings is a topic I'm very passionate about. I believe that that's been mentioned at least once or twice on these editorial conversations.

[00:17:19] Pat Penny: We find a way to talk about it.

[00:17:21] Jason Cohen: So Pat, starting with you, do you personally have a preference for wood-fired ceramic wares in your tea practice? And if so, why?

[00:17:30] Pat Penny: I think we know that we're all like Korean wood fired tea ware evangelists. I think upon our first experience of having and using in tea ceremony and tea context wood fired wares, we all pretty early started to gain a preference for them.

But, I think what's more important, and as we think about how we objectively evaluate wares more than a decade later, we continue to come back to a lot of these wood-fired wares because they do have a pronounced effect on tea. It's not that always every wood-fired ware has the right effect for a tea that you're looking for.

But the effects are always interesting and they're much stronger than we often find for a lot of gas or electric fired wares. And so, I have a few of my own wood-fired wares that I like to use for different styles of tea. Some working really well for high roasted oolong, others working well for aged puer.

And I think beyond just the effect it has on tea, there is an intangible I feel like aesthetic benefit that wood fired wares have, that you do not see in gas or electric fired. Whether that's ceramic or more clay material, there is totally an aesthetic element to wood fired wares that is untouchable from other firing sources.

[00:18:43] Zongjun Li: Yeah, totally agree. Just think about the amount of labors and sweat and tears that went into firing those wares and you know how much of those has built up, thousands of years led to today's technology and instrumentations.

It, it's quite amazing. There is a sense of gravity when you are holding a wood fired wares in your hand, brewing tea. And I, I really like that as I'm drinking tea from a wood fired bowl.

[00:19:11] Jason Cohen: A clarification. So you had mentioned first Korean wares. Those were introduction to wood-fired wares, but do you now have the same preference for Chinese or Japanese wood fired wares?

[00:19:20] Pat Penny: I do. I do have a few Japanese wood fired tea wares, and then I also have some Chinese wares that we've bought from the same sources, including wood-fired porcelain. And I do feel that there is a difference, a significant difference in the way that tea interacts with it, and then the expression of both flavor and aroma. But once again, that visual difference even if the ware is not marred in any way by the wood firing. So even if it's protected in a saggar, even if it's something like blue and white porcelain with a beautiful and clean finish, there's a depth to the wood fired wares that I don't think is, particularly when you can have them in your hands, I don't think is able to be revealed through gas or electric firing.

[00:19:58] Jason Cohen: We are all on team wood fired. There's this intrinsic beauty to them. There's this depth, there's this idea of the weight of history that comes with these wood-fired wares. Are there also specific attributes that you look for that, that these wares have when paired with tea? Is there something that you would say you find and look for as an indicator of this being a high quality wood fired ware that you need to see in order to either acquire it or to use it consistently in your tea practice?

[00:20:26] Zongjun Li: First of all, definitely visual appearance. Wood fired wares has this, you can even think of it as less perfect visual appearance that I find it to have its own charm. And also, wood fired wares tends to have a higher porosity or rougher surface texture. Sometimes that would have more interaction with the tea that you used in the wares.

[00:20:52] Pat Penny: When I'm buying those wood-fired wares, as Zongjun said, it's probably a little bit more aesthetic. And then secondarily to add some rounding. So I usually select those to drink with or pair with teas that I want to round out a little bit, whether it's a really high roast element, some slight dank earthiness from a really wet stored puer. That's where I would go for the wood-fired earthen or stoneware.

When it comes to porcelain that's wood-fired, I'm looking for an accentuation of sweet elements, so a lot of high quality wood fired porcelain I've found to really boost some of the mouthfeel elements like gan (甘). Right. So I feel that it's accentuating things like hui tian (回甜), hui gan (回甘). I've done a lot of side-by-sides where I feel like the lingering aroma on the palette is boosted by the interaction with this wood-fired cup.

So on the porcelain side, I feel like that's where I really go beyond just the visuals and and using those to really enhance the tea rather than on the earthen and stone wear side where I'm probably trying to round or detract or remove certain elements of a tea.

[00:21:54] Zongjun Li: Yeah. It's almost similar to hooking up your stereo with a tube amp.

[00:22:00] Jason Cohen: Desired distortion.

[00:22:02] Zongjun Li: Yeah.

[00:22:03] Jason Cohen: That's a great way of thinking about it for all of the audiophile listeners. Here's an something that we've been working on internally. We've been working on a new commission set for a Yixing teapot triplet, all from the same clay, same shape, same size, but one is wood-fired, one is electric fired and one is gas fired. And we'll be using those throughout a number of different experiments in order to continue writing about them in the book.

How strong is your presupposition that the wood-fired is going to be superior? Mine is very strong. That's why we bothered to commission the set.

How do we go about putting our personal preferences aside and scientifically testing that there is a difference, that we can taste the difference and we can consistently taste the difference, and that there's a real effect going on caused by the wood firing?

[00:22:55] Pat Penny: I'm certainly coming in with a strong bias as well. I do believe the wood firing is gonna come out on top. Really interested to see where the gas and electric stand against it. Luckily, we're all scientifically minded. We've all worked in the sensory world.

I'm not too worried about us approaching it objectively once we actually start to test. But Jason, I, I would put the question back on you. After founding and leading a sensory and analytics company for many years, how do you plan to gather data utilizing this set in a way that we can share out to readers as more than just our anecdotal findings?

[00:23:29] Zongjun Li: Blind tasting, experiment grid. Let's go, Jason!

[00:23:35] Jason Cohen: Zongjun used to work at the same company. He designed many of those blind tasting experimental grid. I was gonna say at this point, I could just give it to the AI. I don't need to do anything.

But, no, I think what we'll have to do is we'll have to do a set of blind tastings. What a lot of groups have attempted to do is actually brew consistently in something like a pingbi bei and then pour it through these different wares blind in order to test the effect.

I'm neutral to negative on that because it is at least possible that there is some activation energy requirement that you don't get hot enough if you're moving across these things or that there's a time-based component in addition to the activation energy. So I think that this idea of brew in a gaiwan, brew in a pingbi bei and then pour it into these different Yixings and test the effect. I think that maybe it works to a smaller degree, but I'm not convinced that you're getting the entire impact. So we'll need to be doing blind tastings. I'm already recording all of the tastings that we're doing, writing them down.

And, on the whole, the wood-fired wares are much more expensive. If it turns out they are not superior. I'll be sad about my prior collecting habits and crushing my preconceived notions in the romanticism of it all. But it'll actually, it'll be a lot less expensive to collect wares in the future if it turns out that this is

[00:24:51] Pat Penny: It's a good time to save ourselves some money.

[00:24:53] Jason Cohen: Yeah. That this experiment proves us wrong. There is good sides to every outcome.

[00:24:59] Zongjun Li: Yeah, I definitely agree.

[00:25:03] Pat Penny: We'll still be collecting them for their visual aesthetic benefits.

[00:25:08] Jason Cohen: My position is that a lot of the attributes that tea practitioners, particularly skilled tea practitioners that are looking for this, attribute to antique wares is actually a function of wood firing. I would say that wood firing probably counts for a lot of the creation of unique surface textures, and that those surface textures are the primary factor that impact a ware's interaction with tea.

[00:25:39] Pat Penny: Surface texture and composition or just the texture itself?

[00:25:44] Jason Cohen: Well, different compositions will react differently in different firings and different kilns. But the idea that if we're talking about ceramic porcelain and porcelain having a different impact on tea, depending on if it was wood-fired or not, I believe that's a function of surface texture and that surface texture has caused the desirable attributes of the antique wares that were wood fired. People attribute to them being antiques, I believe are really predominantly a function of the surface texture caused by the wood firing.

[00:26:11] Pat Penny: Yeah, I think it's a really fascinating argument. This experiment is gonna help us with it. We'll probably have to do another experiment where we also pull in some antiques. Sounds like a worthy investment. We just need a couple hundred more subscribers. So like, comment, subscribe, share with a friend.

I do think of that argument though makes a lot of sense. Because as we think about the development of a lot of these different wares for, maybe not the most part, but I would say greater than 50%, there has been continued refinement and development of these different art forms from antiquity to today.

So many of the porcelain wares, for example, of Jingdezhen, we still covet the antique wares and find them to have amazing effects. But there's still Jingdezhen being made today. I think the process right has certainly continued to evolve. Artisans continue to refine it. So if it's not the materials and it's not the craftsmanship, then certainly the wood firing element would be one of the few factors I can think of that's left.

[00:27:12] Jason Cohen: And purity of glazes, of course in, in somewhere like Jingdezhen. But yeah, I entirely agree.

Do the ceramic artists of Yixing believe that there is something special or different about wood-fired wares? This is the topic that you began to talk about Zongjun. It sounded as if they did not, that actually that they have a dis preference for wood-fired wares.

[00:27:32] Zongjun Li: Yes. I think they really have a dis preference towards dragon kiln but not necessarily towards wood fired wares.

[00:27:40] Jason Cohen: And why is that? Why would ceramic artists have a dis preference to dragon kilns?

[00:27:45] Zongjun Li: I think the main reason as we've talked about previously is the change of fuel source. People no longer use pine, the kiln temperature is no longer the same thing as back in the antique ware period. And also it's not really active used kiln. It was fired for purely ceremonial purpose. So I think the dragon kiln in Yixing has lost its original purpose, and now it's really just merely a mascot, a symbol of this thing once exists here.

[00:28:17] Pat Penny: I think we also talked about community and how the dragon kilns... no one, no single family was likely operating it on its own. You had multiple artisans participating in the use of this kiln. The kilns nowadays, the electric kilns of various sorts and gas kilns of various sorts, function much in the same way.

So we visited pushback kiln and an electric kiln where we saw that it took quite a lot of people to run this kiln. Many different artists were bringing in their wares. And so it feels like the focus of the community of firing has shifted. And I, I don't see it shifting back to this dragon kiln.

I think there's also this maybe feeling of while you still have the community aspect of it there is also an independence to the degree, I think, with which all of these functions in Yixing, as we've talked about in the past, are so highly specialized. And so, if you need to as an artist, you can just bring your wares, drop 'em off and go and do the next thing too. So I think there's some independence that's unlocked as well through the way that the community has shifted into these electric and gas kilns.

[00:29:20] Zongjun Li: Yeah, you can really see this living ecosystem surrounding electrical kiln and gas kiln in Yixing like all of these zhengkou studios, all of these parts studios surrounding all these kilns are quite amazing to see. You don't really see that around dragon kiln anymore.

[00:29:39] Pat Penny: No. We did visit a wood-fired kiln as well, a downdraft kiln. And I'm sure other people fire there, but it really seemed like it was just the guy who was operating the kiln who's doing a lot of firing in that kiln as well.

[00:29:51] Zongjun Li: Yeah. Yeah. Well, technically it's not really legal. It's really in the gray area of using wood or non gas material as the fuel source to fire Yixings. So, that guy we visited really live up in the mountain, takes quite a ride to get to him. It's not really a very popular thing to use.

[00:30:12] Jason Cohen: But I do wanna return to that. It's not just the law that has reduced the demand for wood-fired wares. And it's not just dragon kiln wares that, that we don't see anymore. There, there's general lack in China, particularly in Yixing of wood-fired wares. And why is it that these artist opinions differ so heavily from our practitioner opinions?

[00:30:35] Pat Penny: It's definitely easier to fire in a gas and electric kiln, right? There's no doubt about it.

[00:30:40] Zongjun Li: Yeah. And it's not only easier and also the control of temperature is much more precise in gas kiln or electrical kiln.

It's far easier for the artist to rendered a certain art either artistic effect or a functional effect that they want to achieve within a very narrow temperature range in a gas kiln or electrical kiln.

[00:31:05] Jason Cohen: My last question, do we see any countervailing trends? Is there any hope for the future of wood-fired wares in Yixing?

[00:31:15] Pat Penny: I think we have to create the trend. So I think this experiment will be the start of the trend for wood-fired Yixing wares.

[00:31:22] Jason Cohen: The shipwreck teaware and woodfire teaware fan club.

[00:31:26] Pat Penny: We are at the vanguard of the trend right now.

[00:31:30] Zongjun Li: The wood fired restoration project.

Third wave Yixing, let's go!

[00:31:35] Pat Penny: Buy your wood-fired Yixing NFTs now to pre-order.

[00:31:40] Jason Cohen: You really should have done an ICO before publishing this book.

Alright, everyone,

[00:31:46] Zongjun Li: What we call it?

[00:31:48] Jason Cohen: What should we call it? Tea Coin?

[00:31:50] Zongjun Li: Tea Coin.

[00:31:51] Jason Cohen: Cha Coin.

[00:31:52] Zongjun Li: Zisha Coin, Zisha Nuggets.

[00:31:57] Jason Cohen: Well, thank you everyone for joining us in this edition of Tea Technique Editorial Conversations. Please join us again for our next conversation, Downdraft Kilns.