PREMIUM TEAPOTS

The yellow teapot on the left was a gift from Chris to Caro on her birthday last month; he bought it because she’s a teapot collector, plus it is a send-in-the-premium-coupon Lipton Tea Company giveaway item circa 1935. You clipped the coupons off the tea box, sent them to Lipton, and they mailed your teapot to your small-town post office. I suppose you could choose your color, for I found pictures of a lot of different hues from the same year; this one is the exact shade of the filling of a luscious, tangy cool slice of Lemon Icebox Pie.

Not Lemon Meringue Pie, which is a different item altogether; that one has a cooked filling, heavy on the juice and peel, with water and cornstarch as prime ingredients. Icebox pie is a diet-busting slice made simply with egg yolks, Eagle Brand Milk, and a lot of lemon juice, mixed and poured quickly into that lovely graham cracker or vanilla wafer crust, before it can thicken all on its own. That’s the filling. The whites are whipped into creamy billows, whirled into swoops atop, and baked for long enough to turn the smooth topping to a lovely tanny-gold.

(How do I ALWAYS interrupt with a recipe? That’s a great failing I’m working on).

The burgundy and teal pots are tall, graceful Aladdin cousins to the short squat burgundy Magical Pot of Mammaw legend.

http://lawntea.blogspot.com/2008/11/mammaw.html

These two are premiums from McCormick, and according to Mammaw, the pots were right there in the store to choose from, and there were several colors, but the choices grew scarce as the promotion neared its end. Aunt Lou’s part in the story was that several ladies in the town wanted to “reserve” a color for which time as they had accumulated the proper number of coupons. And then there was THAT froufraw when others found out and got angry at the store, at Aunt Lou, and at the ones who DID get the favored colors. (Some of whom, by the way, had had the gall/folly/lack of tact to mention it at WMU and Club).

I don't know if Mammaw CHOSE hers, liking the squatty roundness better than the tall elegance, or if hers was the last one left. She had a thing about taking advantage, just because the prosperous store owner was her sister, though another sister, Aunt Lo, was a firm proponent of the nepotism rule of Pick 'n' Choice all the way.

And the waiting and hoping tells of the times---when tea was probably thirty cents a box, and perhaps ten coupons would get you the teapot---today we'd just throw all ten boxes in the buggy, pick our color, and go home with the lot. But THREE DOLLARS!! That was a week's wages for a lot of people, those who HAD work. It would more than buy the week's groceries, or a needed pair of shoes, or fabric for making several dresses for the daughters of the house. Those little pots were hard-won and sought after, and when it was the only teapot you HAD, daily use was careful, indeed, and special occasions were made more special by the having.

It’s unusual to find one with the little clerical collar insert still intact. I like to use the two tall ones when Chris and I have afternoon tea together---I drink coffee in the mornings, and the pot is too big for one. We use the insert in either one, and it makes a lovely, perfect-to-the-last-cup pot of tea, because after the five or six minute steep, the insert is removed to a saucer, and the flavor of the tea remains the same for every cup, without that over-brewed tannic flavor that can happen with loose leaves in the pot.

And I don’t know who the little yellow girl on the right is---she just sits there solidly on her perfectly flat bottom, taken down from her perch over the microwave when Chris wants a pot in the morning. My neighbor knitted me a variegated cozy, white with almost every color you can think of amongst the threads, and it looks good on all our pots, with an opening for spout, handle, and a teensy tonsure which fits over the lid button. We use the small yellow most, and she never spills a drop.

She has no credentials, no provenance, as do the other three, but she’s family, too.

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