"The Atlanta Teapot Festival" - a city-wide celebration of teapots, tea and tea ceremony

During a recent buying trip I was noticing how many different styles and variations there were to teapots. We carry a beautiful little ceramic teapot from Wild Goose Pottery and just added a Shino glazed ceramic teapot from Tom Homann. In my daily crawl of the web I happened to do a teapot search and found this article. Seems there are enough differet teapots out there, both glass and ceramic, to warrant an entire month long festival. If any of you are in or visiting Atlanta during the month of April you might want to check this out.

ATLANTA - (February 22, 2006) - In April, Atlanta will host an important new city-wide cultural event. The Atlanta Teapot Festival will celebrate teapots, tea ceremony, and related objects with a broad curriculum of educational events, exhibits, and works for sale. The Festival will draw national attention and establish Atlanta as a destination city for teapot collectors and tea enthusiasts, while highlighting the city's world-class ceramic studios, galleries, artists, and educators.

The Atlanta Teapot Festival will take place over the course of a month at several different venues. Concurrent gallery exhibitions will open on April 15, 2006, at three of Atlanta's preeminent fine craft galleries: MudFire Gallery, The Seen Gallery, and The Signature Shop and Gallery. These exhibitions will present a huge portfolio of teapots and related works by the most significant clay artists working today, gathered from all over the country. Regional and local artists will be presented alongside these living masters.

The Festival incorporates a juried awards competition. Atlanta ceramicist and author Rick Berman will jury Festival-wide awards for Best Functional Teapot and Best Sculptural Teapot, with a $250 prize for each.