Red Hill Capital corporation, the owner of Leona Craig, is a Delaware based corporation whose specialty is investing in inefficient markets and has been involved in the art markets, in America and Europe, since the late 1990's.

Since moving to China several years ago, Red Hill's chairman, Craig Mattoli, has created Leona Craig Catalogue Art Gallery as a physcial and online gallery and store to bring the art of China to the Western world.

China has been famous for its ceramic art since at least the Ming dynasty, which is also around that time that Chinese teapots were invented. The best teapots in the world, come from the town of Yi Xing, about 100 miles west of Shanghai, where teapots have been made since the Ming Dynasty.

What makes Yi Xing teapots so special is the material that they are made of: so-called zisha clay, which is not really clay, at all, but is actually rock paste made from the special rocks that can be found only in that area of the world.

The rocks of Yi Xing contain iron, mica, kaolinite, and quartz. What makes zisha clay so special is its porosity, its ability to retain heat, and a low shrinkage factor when fired in a kiln. Those three properties contribute to its excellence for brewing tea, the latter quality allowing for a tightly fitting lid. You can tell the quality of a teapot by its sound when you turn the lid or 'ring' the pot by tapping the lid against the body: high quality zisha clay pots give the same kind of clear note that you find if you ping fine crystal.

Another important feature of zisha is that it is naturally free of toxins found in some ceramics or glazes. At Leona Craig with one foot, in China, we are able to seek out and establish relationships with the best of the Yixing teapot artists and offer their work, as well as other ceramic sculpture from Chinese artists, in our gallery and online.