Last month we attended an art show, in Guangzhou, where we met several new teapot artists whose work we have added to the gallery.  The first is Wu Dong Jun.  We were attracted by a very unusual teapot design of his, titled Mainstay, which won him the creative design award at the 2007 Yixing Pottery Exhibition.  It is a very modern design, like no others we have come across, in our extensive wanderings through the Chinese teapot markets.  It sits atop tall slender legs and has a low-profile body and modernistic handles.  It is also done in chic but simple colors of black and brown; we display it, below:



We looked though his portfolio and decided to add several other uncommon, but more traditional designs, all of which you can find on the Wu Dung Jun Page of the Leona Craig Art Gallery on-line.

The second artist whom we recently added to the gallery is Zheng Qiu Biao.  Zheng, much like many other artists of the past, from Da Vinci to Picasso, is both a painter and a sculptor.  When that is put into a traditional context, in China, it means that he does traditional Chinese watercolor painting and calligraphy and he sculpts Chinese Yixing zish teapot art.  Several of his teapots have been collected by the Chinese Nationality Art Treasures Museum, one of which is an original design, shown, below.  Tha teapot, titled Chinese Culture, has an unusual shape, comes in an uncommon 1500 cc size, and is inscribed with Chinese calligraphy and carvings of a picture of the royal carriage of Qin Shi Wang (Qin Shi Huang) who was responsible for having the terra cotta army built.



Another teapot of his that was also purchased by the museum is inscribed with several hundred Chinese characters from Buddhist sutras.  An important point in all of this is that Zheng, being also an expert at Chinese calligraphy painting, inscribes all of the calligraphy on his teapots, himself.  As we have found out, though our experience in the Chinese teapot markets, although many teapots are decorated with Chinese calligraphy, it is often done by calligraphers, not the teapot artists, themselves.  You can see all of the teapot art of Zheng, included, so far, in the gallery, on the Zheng Qiu Biao Page of the Leona Craig Art Gallery.

Over the past year since we put up the Leona Craig Art Gallery on-line, we have found about a dozen teapot artists and almost 100 pieces of Yixing zisha teapot art that we have seen fit to include in our gallery.

We hope that you enjoy and appreciate all of the Art of Leona Craig Art.