From the Dingshu kilns to your tea tray
This three-legged toad, or Sān Jiǎo Jīn Chán, belongs to a centuries-old lineage of tea-pet motifs meant to attract wealth and good fortune. It hails from the Dingshu district of Yixing, where the same families who craft the world’s finest zisha teapots spend their spare hours forming cháchǒng — tiny, tactile companions that live on the tea tray and are ‘fed’ during sessions.
Michael Zhan visited the Dingshu workshops in early autumn 2024, walking through narrow lanes lined with drying slabs of raw zisha. The toad shape was born from a collaboration between a veteran artisan and a younger apprentice, blending traditional symbolism with a fresh sense of proportion. Each piece is pinched from uncolored, raw zisha — the same earthy purple-brown clay used for high-end teapots — and intentionally left unglazed, so the porous body can absorb pu-erh, oolong, or black tea over months and years, slowly developing a glossy, lived-in patina.
The toad sits on three legs, one foot resting on a coin, mouth open as if ready to swallow the stream of tea poured over it. Michael recorded the workshop visit on tea.travel; the same toad can be seen undergoing its first ‘feeding’ with a 2017 Yiwu sheng pu-erh, the liquor darkening the clay instantly. Each piece is signed by the artisan and accompanied by a small authenticity card with the workshop’s seal.