an unpacking extravaganza

It's been an exciting Saturday night in the van der Brien household but I have finally reached a point in unpacking where the place just looks messy as opposed to unpacked. We are very excited about this as it means that the floors can finally be cleaned (Marius has been living here with the fortress of boxes for just over a month -yuck!). Even the patio is beginning to look like a place where one might choose to spend an hour with a glass of wine.

There will be photos eventually although not of the NYC trip as I had been promising several posts back. It seems that our point and shoot digital camera is the major fatality of the move and I hadn't downloaded the photos yet. urgh! Cameras can be replaced, the photos cannot -the lost shots also include the lovely cake Susie baked for me.

The other fatality was the lid of a semi-high-end commercial (an oxymoron right?) yixing teapot that M got me several years ago as a Valentine's Day present. He, being the sweetheart that he is, said I could get any other pot I wanted to replace it (sadly it cannot be replaced as only a few were ever made). Where upon I pulled up the website that is selling the teapots of one of the craftsmen of factory 1.

Now this may not sound like much but there are only two "factories" that are recognized as producing authentic yixing teapots (factory 1 is the "original" and the other one is supervised by someone who spent most of his career at factory 1). This is where the masters work. The lowest rung on the ladder is craftsman. The teapot by one of these lowly craftsmen that I lust after sells for $425. As dear as M is, he did say that he meant one of the less authentic teapots.

Wanna see it?

Here's another one by the same guy.

So you see, it could be worse...

note to readers: Please don't go and buy the first pot (I know you're all running around with $400 burning a hole in your pocket!). It has been for sale on this site since I started collecting and I live with the pipe dream that some day I might actually be able to buy it. Of course, then I'd probably break it in a move and lose what little sanity I have left.

A true collector would scoff at this as people in Taiwan have been known to sell their homes to buy a one of a kind pot by a dead master. This would be the little sanity I still have that I mentioned above. House=higher priority than pretty clay teapots. See -that must count for some form of sanity.

I'm still sad though as the one that broke was one of my nicest yixing pots. Murphy's Law I suppose. It couldn't have been the machine made pot my mother got from some museum catalog not knowing anything about them other than the fact that I have a small collection, the one that, if I really loved it, could be replaced with a simple internet search (and Mom, if you're reading this, I REALLY appreciate the fact that you even thought of getting me one at all). No... it has to be the one that NO ONE on the planet can get for me again unless by some odd twist of fate I run into one of the few other people who bought one when they were made.

Okay, so I'm having a little pity party for myself here when I have a nearly equally fine and unbroken pot still in my collection.

Oh yes, poor me.

-although I have to wonder what it is about me, teapots, and moving. My brown betty and another mass produced teapot broke in the move from Chicago to Santa Barbara. I suppose they're beginning to sound like a bad thing for me to collect. Odd.