Xiangyun Hui

The potter

Xiangyunxuan Studio, Yixing

Xiangyun Hui was born in the 1960s into a family of potters in Yixing, Jiangsu. He learned to make teapots from his father as a boy and now works from his own studio, Xiangyunxuan (祥雲軒).

He is regarded as a 15th-generation descendant of the Ming-dynasty teapot master Hui Mengchen (惠孟臣). In the 1990s, worried that the best zisha ore was being mined out, he began buying and storing good raw clay. He is known among Yixing potters as "the clay keeper" (藏泥翁).

Every pot in this collection is fully handmade from Zhu Ni (朱泥), a red Yixing clay that shrinks a lot in the kiln, so fewer pots come through firing intact. His studio works by a simple rule: honest clay, careful work, shapes that stay pleasing to look at, and a pot that pours well every day.