# Brown teapot, mended lid

> The lid broke in 1953 and was riveted on a Saturday.

https://vitrine.themes.dev/collection/teapot/

- Made by: Unknown pottery, Staffordshire
- Date: About 1935
- Material: Glazed earthenware, brass rivet
- Size: 17 cm tall
- Cost new: Tenpence
- Came from: Dorothy Merrin’s house, 2009
- On view: Made to Mend, in the long case

A brown teapot is the most ordinary thing in the collection, which is why it is in the exhibition. The lid cracked in two in 1953. Joseph Merrin, then sixteen, drilled both halves in the works and joined them with a brass rivet meant for a knife handle.

The glue came later, and it was not his. Somebody in the 1970s did not trust the rivet, so the lid has now been mended twice by two generations who never discussed it.