Footnotes

• The seal reads 'Shide Tang', which can be translated as 'The Hall of Everlasting Virtue'. The inscription appears to be by an individual styled Yuanmu, 'Man of the Mountains', who (incoherently) relates how, after Dong Linghou passed away, a great seed of tea remained, which was appropriate to place inside the water of the Yanzhi well to make tea, in Yixing ceramic and tortoise-shell vessels, and that everyone should drink wine, eat fish and be merry.
  
  The creation of Yixing teapots with pewter-cased decoration is said to have originated with the scholar Zhu Jian, who was active during the Jiaqing/Daoguang period (1796 - 1850, see K.S.Lo, The Stonewares of Yixing - From the Ming period to the Present Day, London, 1986, pp.213-214. Most artists who carved on pewter were scholars from Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces in the early nineteenth century, when interest in Yixing stonewares among the literati was revived.
  
  For a Yixing pewter-encased teapot inlaid with jade in the Palace museum, Beijing dated to the Jiaqing reign, see Yixing Zisha Wares in the Palace Museum, Beijing, 2009, p.123, plate 60. For a more similar pewter 'poetic' teapot dated to the Daoguang reign, see China Guardian, 21 November, 2010 Lot 2147.
  
  清道光 紫泥元末山人刻竹朿式詩文錫包壺
  
  「東陵侯去久，佳種至今存，浸向胭脂井，堆宜玳瑁盆。元墓山人。」
  「渴消金爵醉，凉沁玉魚吞，似得西來意，能開甘露門。沁之。」
  「世德堂」篆文方印
  
  壺呈矩形，簡化竹朿式，通體包錫。方蓋直流，其柄亦呈方形，鈕、流、柄皆鑲玉，形態規整。每竹節處均鐫刻文字，一面為楷書「東陵侯去久，佳種至今存，浸向胭脂井，堆宜玳瑁盆。」，落款「元墓山人」；另一面則為「渴消金爵醉，凉沁玉魚吞，似得西來意，能開甘露門」，落款「沁之」。其紫砂內胎，砂質細潤，壺內鈐「世德堂」篆文方印。
  
  以鑲玉的方法來飾鈕、流、柄，古稱「三香壺」，是嘉道年間（1796-1850）盛行的紫砂錫包壺裝飾。此類例子，可參考故宮博物院編，《故宮博物院藏宜興紫砂》，頁123，圖60。
  
  其他鐫刻詩文包錫紫砂壺可見於《中國嘉德2010秋季拍賣會 紫泥菁英-紫砂古器遺珍》，編號2147。