The teapot has been around for many, many years; in fact you can go back as far as 1533 and find one of the oldest teapots known to exist. Back then the popular teapot of the day was the YiXing and this one in particular was unearthed near NanJing which was during the Ming Dynasty in China.
There is some controversy as to whether this teapot is a YiXing; firstly it appears this one was used to boil not brew tea & secondly it is slightly different than a traditional YiXing teapot.
While this debate may be up in the air, it is certainly found to be a teapot from the 1500s and functioned well as one. This teapot is currently on display at the NanJing Museum which is in Jiangsu Province.
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