Teapot Island is a

teapot A teapot is a vessel used for steeping tea leaves or a herbal mix in boiling or near-boiling water, and for serving the resulting infusion which is called tea. It is one of the core components of teaware. Dry tea is available either in tea ba ...

museum in

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, England. The museum grew from the personal teapot collection of owner Sue Blazye, which started when her grandmother gave her a teapot in 1983, encouraging other family members and friends to do the same. The growth of her collection eventually led to her needing a larger space to house it, and she established Teapot Island in

Yalding Yalding is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Maidstone in Kent, England. The village is situated south west of Maidstone at a point where the Rivers Teise and Beult join the River Medway. At the 2001 census, the parish, which incl ...

, in November 2002. The building used for the collection used to be a cafe called the Riverside Diner, which had been in operation since the 1950s. The collection has been valued at £15,000. Teapot Island was featured in the '' Guinness Book of World Records'' in 2004, for being the largest collection of teapots. The museum lost this title in 2011, when it was awarded to a man in China with a collection of 30,000. In 2011, the museum was featured in the book '' Crap Days Out'', in which the authors stated: "It's awful if you don't like teapots. But it's probably all right if you do."

References

External links

* Museums in the Borough of Maidstone Museums established in 2002 2002 establishments in England Decorative arts museums in England Teapots {{UK-museum-stub