A story on Chinese yixing teapot–Let’s drink to that
Sales of collectable teapots are helping to fund community development.
As a teenage boarder, Charlotte di Vita made necklaces to sell to her fashion-starved classmates, donating the prof-its to the Guide Dogs Association. By her early 20s she was selling wooden pendants carved in Ghana to London’s hip crowds and using the profit to fund projects in the developing world.
Di Vita is the glamorous Anglo-Italian founder of Trade plus Aid. Since launching the charitable fund-raising or-ganisation in 1992, she has been on the lookout for the perfect little something that could provide fairly paid employ-ment to developing-world artisans producing the aforementioned “perfect little something”, yet be so desirable to West-erners that they would spend repeatedly.
With her collection of miniature enamelled teapots, di Vita is reasonably sure she has hit upon that perfect some-thing. The miniature teapots, made in an isolated corner of China, were introduced to the buoyant British collectables market in 1998. Sales that year reached $2.7 million, and by the end of last year more than $3 million had been returned to the Chinese enamellists and almost $300,000 had been raised to initiate development projects in Africa.
All this without a background in manufacturing, marketing, art or charity. “I was 24 when I began Trade plus Aid so I hadn’t really had time to develop a background,” di Vita says. For Trade plus Aid to fund the development projects di Vita dreamed of, the crafts or artworks had to have broad appeal. And with enamelled miniature teapots she has found it, with minimum orders set at 5000 these days.
“The only way to make a difference is to appeal to Mrs Bloggs and to Lord and Lady Blah Blah,” di Vita says. The teapots, in 120 different designs, stand eight to 12 centimetres tall and are handmade. Part of their appeal in Britain, di Vita says, is that they revive an almost lost 18th-century art form. Each teapot is handpainted with images following a certain theme, such as Beatrix Potter, or works by van Gogh, Cezanne or Klimt and, with collectors being collectors, there is much repeat business.
She suggests that collectors see the miniature teapots as particularly good value when enamel trinket boxes by British companies such as Halcyon Days and Crummles can cost 10 times as much as the £25 (about $70) teapots. Di Vita says many trinket boxes now use transfers rather than handpainting and if the teapots were made in the UK, they would cost hundreds of pounds. “Artists in Britian who can hand-paint would want £600 to £700 a week. Each teapot takes four days to complete, so you can see how expensive they would be.”
Following the success of the teapots, di Vita plans to add a range of miniature enamel tea cups and hopes to work with Paul McCartney’s wife, Heather Mills, to help children injured by landmines. “We’re talking with the holder of the Yellow Submarine licence about a range because that’s very hot in Britain at the moment.”
And di Vita does not care if people buy her teapots without a thought for struggling communities in Africa and Asia. “They are not buying because it’s a good cause, they are buying because they like them, but once they read the information about Trade plus Aid we get masses of e-mails from customers asking ‘how can we help?’ And it’s not an expensive product; they might otherwise have bought a Tiffany key ring for a friend but now they’ll buy one of our teapots.”
About the Author
Offers handmade yixing teapots,also called zisha teapot, is known as the best in Chinese teapots or China teapots, and accessories from Yixing, China.
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