Howland, an uncommon Chinese Teapot, It has no specific manufacturer as I had got it from my grandpa.

by Chandranil
(Calgery, Canada)

I love this teapot because it is a bit unlike than usual Chinese Teapot.

Rather, it looks like the salt-pot generally used in an Indian kitchen. One can find the difference when he sees the painting on it. Which is a completely Chinese derivation.

The pot is made up of white China clay and painted with blue colors. The blue colors are very similar to that of the colors found in the paintings of Ajanta and Ellora Cave Paintings (around 1000 B.C.) of India. The colors has a name-- Lapis Lazuli.

Three dragon and three monks are painted on the pot. It has fine designed lid on top of it. The middle part of it is swollen and the two ends are narrow. It has also a fine designed handle which is also painted with blue color which, I think are images of ropes made up of coir.

As a whole when we take it at the center table to serve tea, it adds some degree to our aristocracy. But these are not all because I love it. There is some another reason behind it.

My grandpa was a government doctor. While he was a junior doctor in Kolkata Medical College after passing out MBBS (medical degree in India), a world wide NGO requested him to go with them to Tibet for treating the poor fellows living in the monasteries for becoming the future lamas. He agreed then and there and went off to Tibet. After that he spent 8 years in Tibet serving those poor fellows.

When he came back, as he told us as stories, the people of the village he used to live were all crying. One of the village headmen had given him this pot as auspicious gift. And you believe it or not, after he had come back with this gift our family started to flourish in all aspects.

My grandpa gave it to my father and my father gave it to me in turn. But as the village headman had advised, we have been using this pot for three generations. This pot doesn't mean to keep in safe place, as my grandpa had told us. The glamor or the glaze of the pot is just like it had come at our home for the first time. And that's why this is the one that I love among all belongings I have in our house.