They’re not just for holding hot water

Welcome back, we hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year, and are ready to get stuck back into the world of teapots! Here’s the first blog of the year…

The first teapot Sonny and Gloria Kamm got together was a wedding gift, and as far as they can remember it was a typical “brown betty” — the traditional glazed pot.

Today, they have more than 7,500 teapots and related items, filling shelves and closets and even a condominium they bought for storage and affectionally call “Teapot Central.”

Gloria Kamm, a docent at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, describes the collection as sculptures masquerading as teapots.

“It’s a familiar item,” adds Sonny Kamm, “so even people who wouldn’t necessarily be interested in art would find something fun and accessible about these pieces.”

They have a ceramic teapot shaped like Mr. Potato Head. Another looks like a pipe. Recycled tin forms an armadillo-shaped teapot.

Function isn’t necessarily a requirement for the teapots — most wouldn’t be capable of steeping the more than 3,000 varieties of teas out there. But they do need to have the basic components of a traditional pot: handle, spout and lid.

“A teapot can be a plain brown betty or it can be so much more,” Gloria Kamm says.

About 250 teapots in the couple’s collection are part of a nine-city traveling exhibit that is currently showing at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. The display runs through March, and the Kamms checked out the show this week.

The couple started collecting teapots in 1985, shortly after they moved into a new home and were looking through their art collection for something to fill the built-in shelves behind the bar.

The Peabody show displays a broad range of teapots, including designs by Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein and architect Michael Graves, whose whimsical pots are big sellers at Target stores.

Many of the teapots in the Kamm collection were commissioned by the couple. Other pots were purchased through galleries, auction houses and flea markets. The Kamms have teapots that were bought for as little as 25 cents and as much as $50,000.

(this article was taken from rrstar.com)