Posted by Karen on
October 29, 2006
Confessions of a Collectoholic
Hello. My name is Karen and I’m a Collectoholic.
It all started when I was a child, collecting stamps and the labels off wine bottles and anything else that caught my eye. But in recent years it’s progressed to a more serious condition and I’m currently supporting 14 collections of ‘stuff’. I mostly collect stuff from the early to mid 20th century but that’s not a definite boundary.
I thought it might be cathartic to write about some of my collections in this blog. Of course there’s a danger that this might have the reverse effect and encourage me to start even more collections, but that’s a risk I’ll have to take.
So first cab off the rank is Teapots.
I inherited a collection of novelty teapots from my mother (see it’s her fault, not mine). I’ll talk about those in a later post. But as a subset I have a small collection of Victorian and Edwardian porcelain teapots, three of which are pictured below.
I really love these old ones. There is such an air of elegance about them. Most teapots from this era came with a matching teapot stand, but typically this is one of the first things that get damaged so many teapots don’t have the stand.
I don’t have a lot of information about them and the makers’ marks are not helpful. I’m particularly curious about the one with the red roses and gorgeous gilt work. It has a mark of crossed anchors (not crossed swords) on the bottom and I’m advised that it’s of European manufacture (late 19thC). But this mark does not appear on any list of porcelain markings that I’ve seen. If anyone knows anything about a crossed anchor mark I’d really appreciate you getting in touch with me.
The tiny one is probably the oldest of the three and the gilt has rubbed off in a number of places. And the greenish coloured teapot is probably Edwardian, around 1910-20.
