How to pick a good tea pot?

A good tea pot is not only a piece of good tea ware but also a piece of great art work that its value can never be understated. In Feb, 2001, we are going to Taiwan to interview Mr. Cheng, a tea ware expert who has collected More than 500 piece of traditional Chinese tea pots. We will present a few great pictures and articles to you after our interviews. Please stay tuned. For now, let just talk about the knowledge that we already have. The way to pick a good tea pots can be summarized as follows,
l Beauty - A great tea pot is the one that you don't want to drink tea without it. You pick a good tea pot like you pick a wife. You want to look at your tea pot (wife) for the next 50 years and, she will still be beautiful.
2 Material - The tea pots can be clay or porcelain. I personally like clay tea pots. A good clay tea pot need to be bright and hard. Put the tea pot on your palm and tip it with your finger. Feel the sound. With a few practices, you will be able to tell how hard the clay is.
3 Smell - Smell! Are you serious? Yes! That's the word, smell. A brand new clay tea pot will come with clay smelt. If you pick a new tea pot that smell charcoal, oil or other smell, chances are that is not a good tea pot.
4 Tightness - The lid and the pot should be tight. The clay tea pot have a vent on the lid. Fill the pot with water and use your index finger to cover and compress the vent as you tilt the tea pot. If you see the water coming out from the spout, it is not a good tea pot.
5 How's the water now? - Release your finger from the vent as indicated in step 4. A better tea pot will have water now out of the spout smoothly with an opened vent.
6 The gravity center of the tea pot - Fill the tea pot (75% filled) with water. Lift the tea pot and try to pour the water out of the tea pot. If you feel you hand out of balance a bit when you try to pour the water out, it is not a good tea pot.
7 What kinds of tea are your going to use on the pot? - The character of tea is an important factor for the type of tea pot you are going to choose. The tea that emphasis on "smell" such as flower flavored tea needs to retain heat in the pot in order to bring out the smell. In this case, a high frequency tea pot is better (referred to #2 for tipping sound). The tea that emphasis on taste such as Oolong tea or Tie Guan Yin tea needs a tea pot with sound of lower frequency.