The Twining Teapot Gallery at Norwich...

Text by Jane Pettigrew

Photography Courtesy of Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery

A fitting home for a sizeable collection

Norwich is an ancient English city in the county of Norfolk in East Anglia. Its attractions include medieval churches, a Norman cathedral, defensive walls linking 13th-century gateways and watchtowers, a warren of narrow shopping streets, cobbled lanes lined with merchants’ houses dating back to 15th-century Tudor times, elegant town houses built in the 17th and 18th centuries, a covered market that has attracted traders since the 11th century, and a 900-year-old castle that is today home to Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery.

The 11th-century castle, once a royal fortress and later a prison, became the home of Norwich Museum in 1894 and houses the city’s collections of fine art, costumes, textiles, jewellery, silver, glass wares, ceramics and, since 1989, a collection of almost 3,000 British teapots, many of which are displayed in the Museum’s Twining Teapot Gallery. This is probably the largest collection of English ceramic teapots in the world and was acquired by the Castle Museum from two teapot collectors. Colonel Edward Bulwer and his wife started collecting teapots when Bulwer inherited more than 100 pots from his father in 1910 and, as the collection grew, the Colonel designed and built a teapot room at his home in Norfolk. In 1946, the Bulwars presented their entire collection of almost 600 pots, manufactured between 1700 and 1780, to Norwich Castle Museum. This already large number of ceramic pots was augmented in 1989 when the museum purchased an additional 2,000 or so English ceramic pots from Patricia and Philip Miller, whose collection dates from 1780 to the 1980s and includes teapots made by almost all 19th-century potteries.

The Millers had approached Sam Twining, head of the famous tea company at that time, to ask for help in finding a buyer for their pots. When Sam went to meet them at their house, he immediately understood the need to find a new home for their precious collection. He saw that, “Every flat surface in their house was covered with teapots—2,500 teapots to be exact!” There was an obvious risk that the collection would be broken up and sold off to private collectors, museums, and antiques dealers all over the world, and the need to find a solution was of the utmost urgency. Once Norwich Castle Museum was confirmed as the new owner of this extraordinary collection, Sam Twining helped establish the Teapot Gallery and advertised the existence of the collection by taking a selection of the pots on tour around the UK. Suitable historic venues were chosen, and large wooden boxes with padded interiors were crafted to hold the pots safely while in transit. At each location, visitors could admire the teapots and then listen to Sam as he told the story of tea and teapots in Britain. The tour then went abroad to other interested countries, including Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Australia, and the US.

The oldest teapots on show in the museum are from the beginning of the 18th century, a time when tea was becoming more popular amongst wealthy families who could afford the high cost of both the teapots and the tea that would be brewed in them. The first teapots were brought into England from China in the second half of the 17th century, packed in wooden chests that were loaded into the deepest part of the ship’s hull to act as ballast, while chests of tea were stacked higher up in the storage area in order to keep them dry. Those pots were made of either unglazed red earthenware or fine, almost translucent, porcelain, which fascinated tea drinkers in Europe and England. But, since the secret recipe for the manufacture of porcelain was not discovered in Europe until 1709, no porcelain pots were made anywhere in England or Europe until after that date. Instead, in the late 17th century, some English potteries recognised a growing demand for teawares and started manufacturing small ceramic teapots in the same shape and style as the imported pots but in stoneware and earthenware rather than porcelain. Fulham Pottery in West London was making ceramic pots by 1670, and David and John Elers in Staffordshire were making unglazed red stoneware pots from the local clay in the 1690s. The oldest example of those early English ceramic pots in the Norwich collection dates back to 1700, by which time several potteries had been experimenting with the materials they already knew. As the information displayed in the glass cabinet of early 18th-century pots explains, “The British potters were puzzled by the new material called porcelain. At first, they adapted traditional materials, including salt-glazed stoneware. Salt was thrown into the kiln during firing to form a thin glaze.” The pots they made were small, not because tea was expensive, as some people believe, but because they were copies of the small, round-bodied Chinese pots made for the Gongfu style of brewing that has always used small pots.

In 1709, two German scientists, von Tschirnhaus and Böttger, discovered the secret of how to make hard paste porcelain. This material, also called “true porcelain,” was made from the feldspathic rock petuntse and kaolin fired at around 1,400° C. The Teapot Gallery explains what happened next: “Porcelain was a new and difficult material to make. By the 1740s, a kind of porcelain was being produced in Britain. Early factories competed with each other to find a successful recipe. The material they developed is known as soft paste porcelain. It was thinly potted and had the glassy, white surface so admired in Chinese imports. But it was fired at a relatively low temperature, and early teapots tended to shatter when filled with hot water. Some manufacturers advised customers to slowly warm the pot to avoid the risk of flying teapots.” The British ritual of warming the pot may descend from that advice, but it may also have been copied from the Chinese, for they always warm and cleanse the teapot or gaiwan before measuring in the tea.

As visitors move very slowly along the gallery, for there is so much to take in, they gaze in awe at the number of exquisite pots and pore over the historical information and the names of potteries whose teapots are displayed. As the 18th century progressed and tea slowly became less expensive and more readily available, so teapots slowly grew in size. On the shelves of the glass cabinets that focus on early English porcelains, there are countless beautiful pots from Bow China Works, Chelsea Porcelain Works, Worcester, Derby Porcelain Works, and Lowestoft, a soft paste porcelain producer and the only pottery in East Anglia operational between 1750 and 1802. Many of these early 18th-century pots replicate the exquisite decorations seen on Chinese pots from the same period and include flowers and trees, bucolic scenes, people, butterflies, and birds. There is even a charming Lowestoft miniature tea service for a child and her dolls, comprising teapot, four bowls and saucers, milk jug, and sugar basin.

The second half of the 18th century, when tea was more widely drunk, was a time of experimentation with different ingredients to make a more durable porcelain. While some potters were happy to go on producing soft paste porcelain, others were working to develop a reliable, shatterproof, hard paste porcelain. The Gallery’s information cards tell us, “In 1768, William Cookworthy patented a recipe for hard paste porcelain. This was fired at a much higher temperature than soft paste porcelain. His recipe used china stone and white china clay, crucial ingredients in Chinese porcelain. His patent expired in 1796, leaving others free to manufacture hard paste porcelain on a commercial basis.” By 1800, Spode and Minton had devised an alternative recipe that included bone ash, derived from animal bones, to make what is known as bone china.

Meanwhile, Thomas Whieldon, Josiah Wedgwood, and the Leeds Pottery had been developing cream-ware, a refined earthenware with a lead glaze that gave tablewares a highly attractive cream-coloured finish. Wedgwood Pottery never made porcelain in Josiah’s lifetime but continued with earthenwares, stonewares, and creamwares, which were cheaper than porcelain but had a similar pleasing finish. Wedgwood renamed his creamware Queensware in 1765, after Queen Charlotte, George III’s wife, ordered a set of creamware “with a gold ground and raised flowers upon it in green.” Twenty years later, Josiah Wedgwood introduced yet another style of glazing known as pearlware, which, the cabinet display tells us, “is earthenware covered with a white glaze to imitate porcelain. It was often decorated with blue under the glaze. Wedgwood’s new ‘Pearl White’ range was launched in 1779, and many other factories made similar, cheaper wares.” There are copious examples of all these different styles of glaze on display in the Gallery. There are also several shelves arranged with examples of Wedgwood’s Black Basalt pots, which he introduced in 1768. Black Basalt is a hard black stoneware, which has proved so successful for the mass production of Wedgwood teapots, tablewares, and decorative objects that it is still used at Wedgwood today.

Also on show are some very fine pieces of transfer-printed teapots by Wedgwood, Derby, Liverpool, Greatbatch, Staffordshire, Leeds, and Cockpit Hill Potteries. Transfer-printing was introduced by Sadler and Liverpool Potteries in 1756 and was developed by Wedgwood, who used it on his creamwares. The process involves engraving a design onto a metal plate, transferring the inked design onto a special material called “pottery tissue” or “potter’s tissue.” The inked tissue is then positioned on the teapot (or other piece of tableware) that has already been fired, and the teapot is then glazed and fired again.

From the array of early 18th-century pots, which are larger and more colourful than the earlier small, squat teapots copied from China, the Gallery leads us into the late 18th and early 19th century, when ceramic pots became more oval in shape, more showy in character, and often decorated with more extravagant designs in coloured enamels and gold. As afternoon tea claimed more and more people’s attention, we read that, “Massproduced teapots were the centerpiece of elaborate bone china tea services designed to impress or even intimidate visiting guests. They particularly appealed to the Victorian love of ornament and enjoyment of the decorated surface.” On the Gallery shelves, the pots are large, flamboyant, and ornate, with gold decoration and fancy details so typical of the Victorian period.

Since the Great Exhibition in 1851 in London, design was taken much more seriously, and consumers thought much more carefully about the relationship between a household object and the way it looked. Styles changed quickly, and Jane Austen sheds light on this in Northanger Abbey (completed in 1803 but not published until 1816), which the museum refers to and tells visitors: “At this time, teapot designs were subject to rapid changes in fashion. New shapes and patterns were regularly introduced. In the novel, the host, General Tilney, apologises for the age of his tea set although it is only two years old.” Famous designers of that era also involved themselves in creating household objects that were both useful and beautiful. One such was Henry Cole, who established the Victoria and Albert Museum in London’s South Kensington and built the Albert Hall. He designed the cream glazed earthenware teapot on show in Norwich’s Teapot Gallery that, with its matching cup, saucer, and jug, won a prize at the annual exhibition of the Society of Arts in 1846. Several similar pieces are exhibited here under the heading “Designer Good Taste and Art Pottery c. 1850–1900.”

The Teapot Gallery would not be complete without teapots from the 20th century. This was the period when novelty pots were extremely popular, and we can admire and perhaps covet some of the charming Art Deco pots that include a yellow racing car, a green crinoline lady, Humpty Dumpty sitting on a wall, a cockerel, an army tank, a cannon, a black cat with a red ribbon around its neck, and a cosi-ware teapot with its padded chrome jacket that kept the tea hot. There are also pots by Susie Cooper (one of the most influential British ceramic designers in the 1930s and ’40s) and a gorgeous Alfred Meakin Art Deco tea set decorated with bright orange and yellow flowers on a cream background, triangular handles on pot and cups, and octagonal saucers and plates. And in the final cabinet that brings us into the present era, there are some rather quirky designs in the shape of a white teapot with legs and yellow shoes, teapots in the shape of a pig and a camel, and a large white pot that is a caricature of Mrs. Thatcher, whose nose forms the spout!

On first arriving at the Twining Teapot Gallery, the impression is perhaps that it is not as big as you might have expected and will not demand very much of your time. But there is so much information giving the background to each era, the specifics of the individual potteries, and the details of each important piece, that visitors will find value in allowing themselves time to enjoy all the design features on show and to slowly absorb every last piece of knowledge. The exhibition tells us about much more than just the pots. It traces social changes, aspects of design, and the history of tea drinking from the beginning of the 18th century, when only the rich could afford to indulge, to the late 19th century, when afternoon tea demanded large, generous teapots that showed off the hostess’s wealth and good taste.

The very existence of Norwich Museum’s remarkable collection of 3,000 or so teapots calls to mind the fact that in the last decade of the 19th century, the hobby of teapot collecting had become quite a craze. It was probably the time when Colonel Bulwar’s father must have started acquiring his first teapots, and it was also when Richard Banister, in his 1890 book titled Cantor Lectures, wrote in a chapter on The Collection of Teapots, “Teapot collectors are now nearly as numerous in the great circling army of globetrotters as are amateur photographers. . . . A collector has the special delight in handling and even using them, and the woman collector rejoices herself and redeems her pieces from the reproach of uselessness by christening them all from time to time before the afternoon altar of society, the tea-table.” And a more recent and uplifting comment from Barbara Roberts, 34th Governor of Oregon from 1991 to 1995, reminds us how the charm of beautiful teapots, and the tea they pour, make our lives kinder and gentler. She said, “The very sight of a teapot puts a smile on the face of most people. One cannot help but think of more serene and genteel times. From a whimsical child’s teapot to an elegant English teapot to collectible teapots that adorn some homes, they are a subtle reminder of all that is good in this world.”

For more information about Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery and to plan a visit, go to museums.norfolk.gov.uk/norwich-castle.

---

Contributing Editor Jane Pettigrew, an international tea expert who has written many books on the subject, including her most recent, Jane Pettigrew’s World of Tea, is a recipient of the British Empire Medal. A former tearoom owner, she is a much-sought-after consultant to tea businesses and hotels, a conference speaker, and an award-winning tea educator who is co-founder and director of studies of the UK Tea Academy. Although her travels have taken her around the globe, she resides in London.