Of Tea And Teapots

I have loved and collected tea pots since I was a child.  Really.  And boxes, particularly old wooden ones that originally housed candy or stationary.  But is is about tea pots and my love of the world of serving tea that I write today.

The idea of a cup of hot tea can be quite calming even before the kettle boils and the tea begins steeping.  The first thing my husband does each morning is to make me a cup of tea ("Happy Wife, Happy Life").  Charles will agree that it took some time to get the brewing time exactly right, but now he does it so well that I can't start my day without a cup of tea from him!  Dark black English breakfast tea by Twinings.

Once the day is set in motion, other teas will do— Assam, Darjeeling, Oolong, and a variety of green teas.  I make those cups myself.  To the Assam and Darjeeling I will add milk and honey and take a mug into the studio as a companion to the morning.

But in the dead of winter, when there is nothing but grey on the ground and in the sky, I sit with a beautiful teacup and saucer, sipping cup after cup of steaming amber liquid from one or another teapot from my collection.  I don't really have teapots that Lloyd's of London needs to insure, but I have my Grandmother Allen's Rockingham teapot,

along with a child's blue willow pot, and teapots to match almost all my sets of china (which are legion).  I even have three little village tea sets.  My dear friend and former sister-in-law, Cindi, gave me a pink and blue village set, and we immediately sat down and had mint tea in it.  We spent a delightful afternoon with that tea set, and it has always been on display in my home.  These village sets are worth a chapter on their own-- another post, I think.

Teapots call to me when I walk into an antique shop, and I answer automatically.  Sometimes I find a teapot with a matching sugar and creamer, though having the three pieces is not a criteria.  When we visited our friends Mary Kate and Bonnie in Monterey, Massachusetts a few years ago we naturally made the rounds of the antique shops.  I walked through the door of one shop and knew immediately that a teapot waited for me.  I moved slowly around the room filled with lovely objects, waiting for the teapot to reveal itself.  Mid-way down one wall the most gleaming piece of porcelain I have ever seen was waiting for me (you don't believe that?  Neither did Charles).  Despite its age, it looked as if it had never held steeping tea.  It is beautifully wafer-thin, and as I studied it I realized how difficult it would be for me to pour scalding water into it.  Even knowing that, I motioned to the shop owner and waited as she lifted it from its glass shelf.  It still holds my imagination, this beautifully shaped pot of classic, graceful proportions.

The creamer is delightful-- a small clutch of herbs is the perfect complement:

Another special gift was from my beautiful and witty friend, Gloria.  Shaped like a conch shell lying on one side, it is a perfect representation of Gloria's irrepressible humor, and I cannot pass by it without thinking of her.

Then there are the rice-patterned china tea pots.  This beautifully translucent porcelain has tiny rice-grain carvings cut into the piece before it is glazed.  The glaze then collects in the holes, and when it is fired, the tiny holes fill with glaze and allow the light to come through.  Lifting a rice-grained teapot is like lifting a vessel of blue and white light.

I am not the least bit snobbish in my collecting.  I enjoy inexpensive creamware and heavy stoneware, and these tea pots (small-ish and lovely to cradle in your hand) mix well with any sort of setting.

This one is a reproduction of an antique piece.  It is truly a work of art:

Fitz and Floyd created a beautiful circular pattern with this grey-and blue:

Another circular pot is an over-the-top beauty (thank you, Cindi!!!) that always gets a second glance from guests:

And these are my kitchen workhorses, used to steep pitchers of Southern table wine, "Sweet Tea":

This next tea pot falls into the category of "fun" pots.  Look at the sun detail on the yellow piece— I cannot keep from smiling when I use it (and from the chips, it has been used a good bit)!

I think, however, that Judy Brater, of Knoxville, has made the most interesting of my "fun" pots.  This one came to me through an accident of time and place.  One week when I was teaching at the Folk School, a woman walked up to me as I was filling my over-sized mug with hot water for yet another cuppa and announced, "You have my mug."  It took some back and forth and much laughter to realize that "her mug" was one she had made, and one I carried with me every time I left the house!  I told her I wished so often that she made teapots, and she said that she occasionally did, and that she had taken one recently to the Arrowmont School Gift Shop in Gatlinburg.  We were living in Knoxville at that time, so I whipped out my cell phone and called Charles.  This pot was waiting for me when I got home that next weekend (many thanks, dear husband)!

Blue and White always look pert and ready for steeping dark leaves:

These are Hall's pieces, from their Silhouette pattern.  It is, technically, a coffee pot, with a cumbersome drip apparatus that sits over the large open top, but the shape is so traditionally teapot-like that I use it that way (think summertime and iced tea on the porch/patio).  My Irish grandmother had this china.  It was a Jewel Tea collection that was sold off the back of the travelling Jewel Tea truck in the '30s and '40s.  There is even a small platter for scones and tidbits!

And both of Charles' grandmothers had Jewel Tea's Autumn Leaf pattern.  He inherited some of their pieces, which was the beginning of his collecting bug.  This is one of his Autumn Leaf Teapots:

Here is Bethy's chintz tea set, a gift from Granddad when she was only weeks old!  We use this child's set in learning the motions and manners of pouring and serving tea.  One day she can take it home with her— but first we will let Ethan grow up a little and not be so prone to break things.  I keep it in the dining room cupboard, and when she is by herself with me, she asks if we can "play tea" with it.  She very painstakingly helps to lift it from its shelf, including the little embroidered doily it sits on, then goes to the linen chest of drawers and chooses napkins for us to use (do I need to add that her choices are usually in the pink line?).

The little silver spoons, which fit this tiny set so well, are actually the miniature spoons you use with salt dips (of course I had them!):

We are using the smallest of the Portmeirion teapots to practice pouring tea (and water) into her new butterfly-patterned demitasse cups.  She will graduate from the one-cup pot to the two-cup, then to the largest of the pots.

In the basement closet are Christmas teapots, two matching the Cuthbertson Christmas China, and others that are just delightful without being a match for anything other than the spirit of the season.  I will share these with you later in the year. There is even what I call the "Thanksgiving teapot" packed away, and some small pumpkin-shaped ones!  What is a season without a special pot for celebrating?

I am a shameless collector, and there are a few teapots I still crave, though I could never, in good conscience, pay the hundreds of dollars they cost.  Royal Copenhagen's Full Lace pattern is one, and on a quiet day when nothing presses, I will look it up on line and stare at the computer screen the way a teenager stares at a picture of her first love!  Another long-distance love affair is with Belleek's famous basket weave pattern teapot with tiny shamrocks scattered sparingly near the handle.  I will confess to being weak-kneed when I find one in a shop (always new; evidently people never let these teapots out of their hands!).

So, now you are a party to one of my greatest weaknesses:  a love of all things tea-ish, for the ritual of tea with friends or family, and for the beautiful serving pieces that make the simple act of drinking a cup of tea a special event.  I hope Bethy will share that love as she grows older (especially with her British roots), and that the collection will pass to her one day.  She may not want everything I've amassed, but that's quite all right.  Remembering tea with Granmma will be enough for me.