Collector's Hand Carved Stone Tea Pots

As A China only Tour Operator, I go to China quite often to check out new places to send my clients and to meet with my business partners. Providing first hand up to date information is important in planning Custom tours to China and Tibet to my client's interests. A few years ago I found an artist chiseling a stone making a tea pot out of it. It takes several weeks and sometimes much longer to make one in many different designs as I found out. This is an old art form from one particular stone that is good for this purpose as one slip and the piece can be ruined. There is only one school for teaching this near a quarry south of Nanjing. I and a Chinese friend went to find the school because only a few artists chisel these tea pots and all learned to do it at this school. We found the area but local people refused to tell us where it was located for fear that we would steal the process and find the quarry. When I bought my first tea pot, I paid $65 U.S. for it. I had my friend tell the artist that I was sorry but it would never see a tea bag as I considered it a piece of wonderful ART. He looked up with a tear in his eye and thanked me profusely. He then reached under his work bench and brought out the tea pot that you see to the right by itself. He also brought out a newspaper clipping that showed he had won 1st Prize in Shanghai for Best Art of the Show. He put it in a box and would you believe....GAVE it to me as a gift. He said, he knew it would be in a home that appreciated his art and wanted me to have it. I never saw him again and have yet to find these beautiful pieces of art anywhere else in China. A wonderful find and that is what China is all about. Check out my web site at wwww.interlakechinatours.com I hope you will find treasures of your own. Click on the photos for a full screen view.