Teapots - short, stout and strange - rolling into N.C.

In May, a 51-foot tractor trailer snaked through the mountains of Allegheny County and deposited at a warehouse here 1,600 boxes containing more than 4,000 teapots.

And that’s only the half of it.

The Sparta Teapot Museum is under way, with the nationally-known collection of millionaire lawyer Sonny Kamm moving from California to North Carolina, perhaps as many as 10,000 items, including one almost six feet tall. Museum backers have bought land downtown, hired an architect and are raising money.

That last activity created a hullabaloo recently when the state legislature passed a budget with $400,000 for the teapot museum.

“Pork!” cried some legislators and critics amid jibes about “I’m a little teapot” and visions of a museum displaying wares from grandmother’s kitchen.

The ridicule reached this town of about 2,000 some 105 miles northwest of Charlotte and the ears of Jonathan Halsey, manager of the $10 million project.

“It seems very frivolous if you focus on the name, but underneath that name is an awesome-in-scope mission,” he said.

The mission is economic development. A county that’s lost 2,000 jobs in the past five years — cutting one-third of its labor force — looks to tourism to bring jobs. Backers believe the teapot museum, about 7 miles from the Blue Ridge Parkway, will ring cash registers with an estimated 61,000 visitors a year.

“This is an opportunity for the arts to lead the revitalization,” said Halsey.

Meanwhile, curator Mary Douglas works at a computer entering each piece — teapots by famous artists and more humble items — wondering just how many pieces Kamm has.

“There’s no way to know until it’s all counted,” said Douglas. “We need to start a betting pool.”

Stopping tourists

From his Los Angeles home, Kamm kept up with North Carolina’s teapot tempest. He sees a silver lining: teaching people about the museum.”It seemed like an easy target but turned out not to be,” he said in a phone interview. “(The appropriation) passed, and there have been positive articles since then.”

Kamm has always wanted his collection to go to a small town and be a focus for economic development.

In 2003, Jean McLaughlin, director of Penland School of Crafts, visited the Kamms in Los Angeles and talked about a museum. Mindful of North Carolina’s strong craft heritage, she put them in touch with Winston-Salem philanthropist Phil Hanes.

He has ties to Sparta through the country club in Roaring Gap his family helped found and his farm on the New River in Grayson County, Va.

Leading the development is the nonprofit New River Community Partners. For its largest project ever, it has raised about $2 million, including the $400,000 from the state.

It also has gotten $380,000 from the Golden LEAF foundation, which distributes the state’s tobacco settlement money. The foundation has been criticized for how it spends that money. Halsey said the grant was justified because Golden LEAF’s mission is to create jobs. A predicted 123 will come to Sparta.

The Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation chipped in $78,000, and AdvantageWest, which supports economic development in the mountain, $25,000.

Halsey sees advantages for the teapot museum not only in its proximity to the Blue Ridge Parkway, but to the Ben Long frescos in Ashe County, the Blue Ridge Music Center in nearby Galax, Va., and vineyards in the Yadkin Valley to the east.

A study by Economic Research Associates of Washington predicted about 60,000 visitors a year for the museum — if it is heavily marketed. That would add $7.5 million each year to Allegheny County’s economy.

Halsey said since January seven businesses have opened downtown, five of them because of the teapot museum, scheduled to open in 2008.

“We’ve got people traveling through all these counties but no reason to stop and spend money in Sparta,” he said.

Populist approach

Kamm is a populist collector, as likely to buy work at a flea market as at Christie’s auction house. The collection he and his wife, Gloria, amassed over 25 years roughly breaks into four areas:

• Artist-made, nonfunctional pieces by artists such as Michael Lucero and Cindy Sherman.

• Antique teapots, including pieces from England and China.

• Production teapots, including novelty items such as teapots based on cartoon characters

• Items with teapot motifs such as clocks, calendars and refrigerator magnets.

The work ranges from a teapot in the shape of a V8 engine, to others with portraits of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe and one made of folded $5 bills.

The Kamms are still collecting, sending about 10 pieces per month directly to the Sparta warehouse. “It’s overwhelming,” said curator Mary Douglas.

Halsey said the collection has not been appraised but has been valued at $5 million.

A portion of this work will fill the 12,000-square-foot exhibition space in the 30,000-square-foot museum. Probably the presentation, like the museum’s benefactor, will be populist.

“The Artful Teapot,” an exhibit drawn from his collection, has attracted crowds in cities such as Chicago and Toronto — and about 20,000 at the Mint Museum of Craft Design in Charlotte last year.

Kamm wants crowds in Sparta, too.

“We want them to laugh, talk to the people they’re with,” he said. “We don’t want a serious mausoleum-type museum. We have to appeal to a wide variety of people who travel the Blue Ridge Parkway, all the way from hunters to grandmas.”

Charlotte Connections

• Teapot museum curator Mary Douglas is a 1982 graduate of UNC Charlotte. From 1997 to 2001, she was curator at the Mint Museum of Craft + Design.

• Architect Joddy Peer, of Jenkins-Peer Architects, leads the design of the museum. He says it will be modern in style on a 5.2-acre site downtown. Construction is due to begin next year.

• Former city manager Wendell White is on the teapot museum board. Retired, he lives in Allegheny County.

(written by Richard Maschal for the Charlotte Observer)