Cadogan Teapot
Q: I recently bought an unusual teapot to add to my growing collection. The top is closed and there is no lid. You fill the teapot through a small hole in the bottom. When you turn the pot over, the water does not spill out. Where did this idea come from?
A: You have a ‘Cadogan teapot,’ sometimes called a puzzle pot. Inside the hole at the bottom, there’s a long cone-shaped tube that goes up inside the pot and keeps the water from spilling. This type of pot was invented by the Chinese to hold wine, but in the late 1700s the English adapted the form for hot water. (The pot cannot be used to brew tea, however, because the leaves will clog the tube.) The pot was named ‘Cadogan’ in the 1800s, either because England’s Lady Cadogan brought a Chinese wine pot back to England after a trip or because she liked to mystify her guests with this kind of pot.
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Dr. Hans Sloane, father of Elizabeth, and forefather of the Cadogan dynasty as well as the instigator of the British Museum also happened to be the person who introduced drinking chocolate to Europe.
No one appears to know exactly what the Cadogan ‘teapot’ was designed for, only that it was manufactured at the Rockingham Factory during the 1780s whilst under the management of Messrs Bingley, Brameld, and Co; when they were experimenting with numerous teapot designs.
(In the 1750s a Soho grocer named Nicholas Sanders claimed to be selling Hans Sloane’s recipe as a medicinal elixir, perhaps making ‘Sir Hans Sloane’s Milk Chocolate’ the first brand-name milk chocolate drink)
I propose that Lady Cadogan eventually found the design in amongst her father’s possessions, and that the pot was manufactured in this way for the purpose of heating milk for pouring onto the prepared ground chocolate powder as no solids could be put into the pot without it becoming clogged up?
Dr. Hans Sloane, father of Elizabeth, and forefather of the Cadogan dynasty as well as the instigator of the British Museum also happened to be the person who introduced drinking chocolate to Europe.
No one appears to know exactly what the Cadogan ‘teapot’ was designed for, only that it was manufactured at the Rockingham Factory during the 1780s whilst under the management of Messrs Bingley, Brameld, and Co; when they were experimenting with numerous teapot designs.
(In the 1750s a Soho grocer named Nicholas Sanders claimed to be selling Hans Sloane’s recipe as a medicinal elixir, perhaps making ‘Sir Hans Sloane’s Milk Chocolate’ the first brand-name milk chocolate drink)
I propose that Lady Cadogan eventually found the design in amongst her father’s possessions, and that the pot was manufactured in this way for the purpose of heating milk for pouring onto the prepared ground chocolate powder as no solids could be put into the pot without it becoming clogged up?