Learning through the hand: tacit knowledge, material sensitivity, and apprenticeship in Yixing Zisha teapot crafting

This paper examines Yixing Zisha teapot crafting as a case study of tacit knowing in traditional craftsmanship. Drawing on short-term participant observation and scholarship on tacit knowledge, embodied practice, material engagement, and skilled perception, it analyzes tactile judgment, perceptual-aesthetic evaluation, bodily coordination, and temporal sensitivity. Rather than treating these as separate forms of hidden knowledge, the paper conceptualizes them as interdependent capacities operating through perceptual attunement, situated judgment, adaptive action, and material feedback. It further proposes that some judgments may be history-sensitive because the practical significance of present material conditions may depend partly on preceding handling and change. Apprenticeship is accordingly understood as attention calibration through which learners become sensitive to action-relevant differences in resistance, moisture, balance, rhythm, and form. This process-oriented account explains why documentation may preserve procedures and observable features without reproducing the embodied capacity to interpret changing conditions and respond appropriately. The framework further suggests that artisan judgment remains consequential where material heterogeneity and process history produce variation that cannot be captured economically through standardization or current-state measurements, while identifying possibilities for hybrid systems combining standardized production with situated human or adaptive intervention. The study therefore shifts attention from documenting craft knowledge toward sustaining the social and material conditions through which tacit knowing develops and is transmitted.