Teapot

Two Victorian Era teapots.

Glass tea pot containing mint leaves, Kashgar, Xinjiang, China

A teapot is a vessel used for steeping tea leaves or a herbal mix in near-boiling water. Tea may be either in a tea bag or loose, in which case a tea strainer will be needed, either to hold the leaves as they steep or to catch the leaves inside the teapot when the tea is poured. Teapots usually have an opening with a lid at their top, where the tea and water are added, a handle for holding by hand and a spout through which the tea is served. Some teapots have a strainer built-in on the inner edge of spout. A small hole in the lid is necessary for air access inside to stop the spout from dripping and splashing when tea is poured. In modern times, a tea cosy may be used to enhance the steeping or to prevent the contents of the teapot from cooling too rapidly.

History of the teapot

A Chinese porcelain hand painted blue and white teapot 18th Century

The teapot probably derived from the ceramic kettles and wine pots which were also made in bronze and other metals and were a feature of Chinese cultural life for thousands of years. The earliest example of a teapot that has survived to this day seems to be the one in the Flagstaff House Museum of Teaware; it has been dated to 1513 and attributed to Gongchun.^[1]

Early teapots are small by western standards because they are generally designed for a single drinker and the Chinese historically drank the tea directly from the spout. The size reflects the importance of serving small portions each time so that the flavours can be better concentrated, controlled and then repeated. ^[2]

From the end of the 17th century tea was shipped from China to Europe as part of the export of exotic spices and luxury goods. The ships that brought the tea also carried porcelain teapots. The majority of these teapots were painted in blue and white underglaze. Porcelain being completely vitrified will withstand sea water without damage, so the teapots were packed below deck whilst the tea stayed on top in the dry.^[3]

Tea drinking in Europe was initially the preserve of the upper classes since it was very expensive. Porcelain teapots were particularly desirable because porcelain could not be made in Europe at that time. It wasn't until 1708 that Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus devised a way of making porcelain in Dresden, Germany, and started the Meissen factory in 1710.^[4] When European potteries began to make their own tea wares they were naturally inspired by the Chinese designs.

Heat retention

To keep tea pots hot after tea is first brewed, early English households employed the tea cosy, a padded fabric covering, much like a hat, that slips over the tea pot. Often decorated with lace or log cabin motifs in the early 1900s, the modern tea cosy has come back into fashion with the resurgence of loose leaf tea ateliers.^{[citation needed]}

Chocolate teapot

A chocolate teapot is a teapot that would be made from chocolate. It is commonly supposed that such a teapot would melt, and be impossible to use, therefore the term is often used as an analogy for any useless item.

In fact, experimental research in 2001^[5] failed to successfully use a chocolate teapot they had made, but later research by The Naked Scientists in 2008 ^[6] shows that such a teapot can be used to make tea, provided that the walls of the teapot are made over a centimetre thick.

Teapots in non-teamaking contexts

The Utah Teapot

A teapot has a rather peculiar shape, and its fame has often nothing to do with its primary function.

• The Utah Teapot is a standard reference object of the computer graphics community, comparable to Hello, World for its popularity. It is included as a graphics primitive in many graphics packages, including AutoCAD, POV-Ray, OpenGL, Direct3D, and 3ds Max.
• Russell's teapot, a skeptic analogy refuting the unfalsifiability of religious claims devised by Bertrand Russell.
• The teapot has been featured in the nursery rhyme, "I'm a Little Teapot".
• Part of the constellation of Sagittarius contains an asterism (or a star pattern not officially recognised as a constellation) that famously resembles a teapot.

In architecture

• In 2004, a Malaysian cult called the Sky Kingdom erected a pink teapot 35 feet tall on its property as part of its own private symbolism ^[7].As part of a crackdown on the sect in August 2005 bulldozers and heavy machinery were sent in to tear down the structure.

• The (purported) world's largest architectural teapot is to be found in Ohio ^[8].In 1938 The Chester Teapot was constructed by William "Babe" Devon. The Teapot started its life as a gigantic wooden hogshead barrel for a Hire's Root Beer advertising campaign. Devon purchased the barrel in Pennsylvania and had it shipped to Chester where it was set up on Carolina Avenue, which is also State Route 2. A spout and handle were added at this time and the wooden barrel was covered with tin to form the teapot's shape. A large glass ball was placed on top to make the knob of the "lid". The Teapot stood in front of Devon's pottery outlet store. Local teenagers were hired to run a concession and souvenir stand which was set up inside the Teapot.

See also

• Brown Betty
• Kettle
• Kyusu, Japanese teapot
• Samovar, a heated metal container traditionally used to boil water for tea in and around Russia, as well as in other Slavic nations, Iran and Turkey
• Yixing clay teapot, a special Chinese clay teapot

References

1. ^ Collecting teapots Leah Rousmaniere ISBN 0-375-72045-6
2. ^ Guide to YiXing Teapots - http://www.imperialteapots.com/servlet/the-template/guidetoyixingteapots/Page
3. ^ Teapots Paul Tippett ISBN 0-8212-2269-4
4. ^ Gleeson, Janet. The Arcanum, an accurate historic novel on the greed, obsession, murder and betrayal that led to the creation of Meissen porcelain. Bantam Books, London, 1998.
5. ^ "An Appraisal of the Utility of a Chocolate Teapot". Plokta. http://www.plokta.com/plokta/issue23/teapot.htm. Retrieved 2009-01-21. 
6. ^ "How useless is a Chocolate Teapot?". Kitchen Science Experiments. The Naked Scientists. http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/kitchenscience/exp/how-useless-is-a-chocolate-teapot/. Retrieved 2008-12-10. 
7. ^ [1]
8. ^ [2]

Further reading

• Steve Woodhead, "The Teapot Book" A.&C. Black, 2005 ISBN 0713660163.
• Robin Emmerson, "British Teapots and Tea Drinking" HMSO, 1992 ISBN 0-11-701509-1
• Garth Clark "The Artful Teapot" Thames and Hudson ISBN 0-500-51045-8
• Edward Bramah "Novelty Teapots" Quiller Press ISBN 1-870948-72-6

External links

• A history of teapots
• A brief history of teapots from Stoke-on-Trent Museums