Teapots

Tea, or more precisely the pots it is served in, has always been a strong stimulant for Paul Gibbs. After many years as a general antiques dealer, he started to focus on teapots in the 1960s.

Together with his wife Christine, he built a collection of more than 2,000 pots that for nearly 20 years has been housed in the World Teapot Museum in Conwy, north Wales.

“I was always interested in ceramics and this was a branch of the market that offered opportunities to buy,” says Gibbs. “I bought three teapots from an elderly lady who was a retired dealer. One was a fish swallowing a fish in majolicaware. I’ve still got it.”

Majolicaware stands out for its very strong colouring and was popular between the middle and end of the 19th century. Gibbs paid about £60 for the fish teapot but reckons it would be worth £550 or so now. Majolica pieces made in the most prestigious factories such as Minton might fetch up £10,000.

Teapots, with their image of slightly dated domesticity and their struggle for a role in the age of the teabag, may seem an unusual object of a collector’s passion. But they come in a satisfying range of colours and materials from porcelain and bone china, through pewter and glass to terracotta and earthenware.

The shapes they take on range from English cottages, through political caricature heads, to tanks, aeroplanes and ocean liners. Of all the items of tableware, they reflect more than most the changing cultural and even political fashions.

Many of the pots in Gibbs’ collection were mass-produced. Others he describes as art pottery or studio wear, made by artists such as Clarice Cliff – known for her art deco designs – and hand-painted.

“You would be hard-pressed to go into any house in England and not come across a teapot,” says Gibbs. “They convey a lot of history. They are a rich hunting ground for ideas and an important means of communication. They were a wonderful way to get your propaganda across before television because they were in every home. They were used for all sorts of political information.”

Gibbs’ collection includes political caricatures of the likes of Lloyd George, Herbert Asquith and Winston Churchill. Depending on who is depicted, these political caricatures can now go for £500-£600 rising to £2,000-£3,000. Then there are the wartime teapots displaying the allied flags and bearing the legend: “War against Hitlerism” and “That right shall prevail” and given out to people who had donated aluminium to the war effort.

The tradition of political caricature has persisted. Pots of politicians from the 1980s including Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan have shot up in value from around £30 to £250-£300. “These pots are not rare but they caught the public interest even though they are only 10 or so years old,” says Gibbs.

At the other end of the time scale, the earliest teapots in Gibbs’ collection date from the early 18th century when they were sent over from China as ballast in the tea clippers. Because tea weighed so little in relation to its volume, the vessels needed to take on extra weight to ride the high seas. “Some early 18th century teapots are easier to find than 20th century ones because they came over in such large numbers,” says Gibbs. “In those days tea was an exotic brew, more expensive than champagne is now. The average man could not afford tea.”

Those who could afford tea, expected it to be brewed in an expensive teapot, which explains the fine quality of many European-made pots. When tea drinking spread to the masses there was an upsurge in the number of European factories making teapots.

After receiving thousands of visitors to his cramped museum in one of the 22 medieval towers that punctuate Conwy’s castle wall, Gibbs, who will be 70 in July, recently decided to dispose of his collection. He has shut the museum, though the online shop is still in business (www.teapotworld.co.uk).

The collection is being kept together and is due to go to a new teapot museum being set up by two Californian collectors, Sonny and Gloria Kamm. The Kamms, who visited the Conwy museum last year, were looking for a permanent home for their 8,000-piece collection of antiques and teapots and lit upon Sparta, a small town on the edge of Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina.

But while Gibbs will be selling off most of his pots he will be retaining and building on a smaller collection of more than 100 pieces, “I am focusing on the really scarce items. I could never put together such a large collection again even assuming the items were available. Now my interest is in the unusual.”

As part of this second collection, Gibbs recently bought a set comprising teapot, milk jug and sugar bowl based on the Sam Weller character from Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers. They form part of a Dickens themed series from the Royal Doulton factory and others that also includes characters such as Sairey Gamp, the midwife from Martin Chuzzlewit.

“They were made at the beginning of the war but the series stopped when painted ceramics stopped being made. Sometimes the pots turn up but the whole set only comes along once in a blue moon. The milk jug and the sugar bowl are small and often got separated from the pot. Very occasionally they come up at auction.”

As well as building his second collection, Gibbs continues to provide advice and information to other collectors. This is part of a general trend towards interest in collecting pots that has emerged. “Prices have gone up over the last three to four years,” says Gibbs. “People realise that they are important so our collection has done a bit of good there. There are a lot of collectors out there now.”