PorSva (Jianshui Zitao)

PorSva works in Jianshui zitao, the purple-clay pottery tradition centered on Wanyao Village, a short walk from Jianshui's city center in southeastern Yunnan. The raw material is the area's distinctive "five-coloured soil" — red, yellow, cyan, purple and white clays dug from Wucai (Five Colours) Mountain — and the craft is old enough, and localized enough, to be counted among China's Four Great Pottery traditions. Large-scale industrial production never really reached Jianshui, which is part of why the hand methods have survived largely intact.

The workshop's output centers on tea equipment: wheel-thrown, hand-trimmed teapots in traditional and wood-fired finishes, carved gaiwan, coordinated tea sets, individual teacups from 60 to 130ml, and storage canisters, alongside larger steam pots and lidded mugs. Decoration leans on relief and inlay carving — lotus, peony and plum-blossom motifs, and the yin-carved, yang-filled technique distinctive to the region — with wood-fired pieces left showing natural ash textures from the kiln.

Because the clay itself is porous and mineral-rich, it's prized in Chinese tea culture for how it interacts with tea over repeated use, in the same functional, collectible category as Yixing zisha — making PorSva's pieces as much a long-term tea tool as a decorative object.