TheNHBushman.com

What does one do when one acquires a number of teapots? Any collector of teapots knows that the number of them adds up rather quickly. And the truth be told, the number of pretty and attractive teapots far outweighs the number of well designed and functional teapots that are actually useful for brewing tea. Nevertheless, the problem remains: what do I do with all of them?

Fortunately if you live in Taiwan there are many display options available. Shown here is a classic teapot display that I got yesterday in Sanyi - the center of Taiwan’s woodworking industry. The interesting thing about this particular display is that it is an import from Vietnam. Taiwan is outsourcing a lot of its wood products from Vietnam because its cheaper to buy them finished than to manufacture them here in Taiwan.

The display is 79cm (31″) tall and features 2 pull out drawers at the bottom. I put the drinking cups and aroma cups in the drawers. Notice the 2 Japanese teapots previous blogged in the center. At the top right is a clear glass teapot used for brewing the lower temperature green teas. Bottom left are 2 items. Far left is a porcelain teapot that I use as a gong bei for gongfu style tea. I have matching drinking and aroma cups from Yinga, the center of the ceramic industry in Taiwan (I’ll show the cups in a later post). The teapot immediately to the right is a previously blogged sand pot. On the bottom right is the previously blogged fish pot. The joke on me is - while I originally was lead to believe that this fish pot was rare, I saw a bunch of them for sale in Hong Kong.

In closing I want to say that this display is by no means optimized, and it certainly does not appear harmonious. I am going to play around with the placement over time and hopefully discover a pleasing arrangement.