Oct 29 2006
giving pot
The giving and receiving of a tea pot as a gift is a complex, controversial, activity with plenty of room for getting it wrong and causing offense. I hope this little post will help you avoid any unsightly teapot gifting disasters. 
Before buying a person a teapot find out:
- what teas they like to drink and serve. Buy the right pot for their prefered tea type.
- what pots they already have. Do not duplicate what they have if they have sufficient.
- their favourite pot and why. Personalise the gift by finding what makes a pot special to them and seeking this out. Maybe colour is important, maybe matching it to an existing set is important, maybe size is important, maybe not having pictures of roses all over it is important….
- what they think they are lacking. Try to fill a self-percieved gap in their teapot collection.
Verify that it pours well by testing it. Experienced tea pot users can ’see’ a good pouring pot by looking at the shape and size of the pot, lid, and spout. Click on the picture of my Le Creuset pot pouring below to see a pouring sequence of 4 pictures from a good pot:
- showing now: full pot accurately angled for good pour.
- full pot inaccurately angled (or over-filled) producing embarresing spillage.
- half empty pot accurately tilted for pouring
- almost empty pot, getting the last drip
My experience suggests that lovers definitely give the best teapots closely followed by Mumzie.
giving pot
The animation (.gif) linked from the picture was made using Microsoft Digital Image Pro 10. I just stumbled across how to do it, a ‘Tool’ called making a ‘flipbook’. That was fairly easy, so it may happen again
I don’t own, can’t afford the fancy ‘Photoshop’ software.
That was cool.
Just a thought if you don’t have the cash for software that you want see if you can use someones discount that works at a software vendor. I know MSFT employees sometimes get really good deals on software. If you have any friends at MSFT you should see if they can get you a discount on the software you want to buy.