Teapot museum is no joke

Teapot museum is no joke

Just the thought of the Sparta Teapot Museum causes snickers -- as if Aunt Bee enclosed her back porch and put her prized tea kettles out for display.

Rep. Jim Harrell, a Democrat from Surry County who helped put $400,000 for the museum in the state budget, has been serenaded by smart-aleck colleagues: "I'm a little teapot, short and stout. Here is my handle. Here is my spout."

The museum has become a poster child for pork-barrel spending -- and could become an issue in next year's legislative elections.

"How do we justify $400,000 for a teapot museum?" asked state Senate GOP leader Phil Berger. "How do you think that plays out there?"

Talk about a tempest in a teapot.

In fact, the teapot museum is a sophisticated, $10 million project thought up by one of North Carolina's leading arts patrons, involving the world-class collection of a California millionaire. Part of the collection has been touring museums in Toronto; Charlotte; Long Beach, Calif.; and Chicago.

Aunt Bee indeed.

The $5 million collection belongs to Sonny and Gloria Kamm of Pasadena. The aging couple were looking for a permanent home for their 8,000-piece collection of rare antiques, mass-produced teapots and teapots made as works of art.

The couple thought their teapots would get lost in the L.A. glitz and looked for a rural setting where their teapots could shine and boost the local economy. Their models are the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., and the Museum of the American Quilter's Society in Paducah, Ky.

Enter Phil Hanes, the Winston-Salem millionaire and arts patron. Hanes is perhaps best known for helping shape the N.C. School of the Arts, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art and the Roger L. Stevens Center for the Performing Arts, all in Winston-Salem.

Hanes helped persuade the Kamms to send their teapots to a proposed new museum in Sparta, the Alleghany mountain town near the Roaring Gap Country Club, the longtime summer retreat of Winston-Salem's blue bloods.

Why Sparta? Well, for one thing, Alleghany County needs a lot of help. Since 2000, the county has lost 2,000 of its 6,000 jobs -- mainly in textiles.

Sparta is trying to draw some of the tourist trade from the Blue Ridge Parkway, about 5 miles away. The strategy is to make the teapot museum a stop for the growing number of people visiting the vineyards in the nearby Yadkin Valley and Blue Ridge Music Center, which is just across the border in Galax, Va.

So far, backers have raised $2 million from private donations and foundation grants. U.S. Sen. Richard Burr and U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx are lobbying to get $1 million in federal money, said Patrick Woodie, the project's executive director.

The museum backers hope to attract 60,000 visitors annually when it opens in 2008.

When the legislature spends money on urban museums, it's called culture. When it helps rural museums, it's called pork.

But as Woodie noted, there is something interesting brewing in Sparta: "There's more to it than the tea kettle on your grandmother's stove."