LIKE the drinking of tea, collecting teapots can become an addiction. But it is a popular one among those who consider a few pieces of fine art, or even fine craftwork, to be an asset in any investment portfolio.
While the debate about whether or not art is an investment goes on Yixing teapot with no conclusion, serious buyers continue to bid high prices at Sotheby’s and Christie’s auctions. Others haunt galleries, while the would-be art collectors scour markets for a piece to get them started.
And while it is, admittedly, more difficult to dissolve artwork into cash than it is with gold or diamonds, art has a value which is difficult to define in dollars.
The value of most commodities reflects their rarity, the need for them, or the ease with which they can be traded.
Art, though, has a special place. Does any broker or investor love his blue chip stock, appreciate looking at his government bonds or enjoy showing off  purple clay teapots his forex account to dinner guests in the same way the art collector draws attention to his original Van Gogh hanging on the wall?
As Mr Charles Garnett, sales and marketing manager for Altfield Interiors, points out, the benefit of investing in art is double-edged.
It has both aesthetic appeal and intelligently chosen pieces can return high yields.
“In other words, one of the criteria for buying a painting, or a piece of ceramic, should be that you like it,” said Mr Garnett.
Like any investment, every piece of art carries flying lanterns the risk that someone else might not be prepared to pay more than you paid for it.
Of all assets, art is personal and in the eye of the beholder. To buy strictly for investment is a trap.

Teapot, is used for tea and a tea with mouth containers.
Teapot is an important component Yixing teapots of tea is mainly used to make tea, but also directly with a small teapot to make tea and Sheng tea drinking discretion alone.
Teapot by the lid, expensive, Hu Di, circular foot, four-part, and lid with a hole, button, seat, lid and other details. Expensive, and a mouth, extended (cold wall), mouth, flow, abdomen, shoulder, put (handle, pull) and so on.
Because of the pot, lid, bottom, form the nuances, the basic form of the teapot had nearly 200. Tea, the Yixing teapot size determined by the number of people drinking tea.
Texture teapot many more are currently using purple clay teapots or ceramic pot.
Buy a new pot before use can first put some tea leaves in boiling blisters so that more foam a few times more, then scrub clean, inside and outside, will jar the elimination of residual sand. Scrub with a bubble tea is better off. Because some of the vendors, the sale of tea, you may give teapot “of make-up”, so just bought a teapot for cleaning must remove some of the resulting odor.

MORE collectors in Singapore are buying expensive Chinese teapots,  and some are willing to pay up to $ 300,000 for one, says Mr Lee Chee Keong, chairman of the Tea Cultural Society (Singapore), a group formed in 1992 by 10 teahouses in Singapore to promote the art of tea appreciation.
The increased interest Yixing teapotsЈ¬ adds Mr Lee, himself the proud owner of 20 Chinese teapots, is reflected in the growing number of shops selling Chinese teapots.
“About four years ago, there were hardly any such shops, now there are at least eight of them,” he says in Mandarin.
Chinese teapots are prized for the good quality of their clay and the expertise of their craftsmanship. He says teapots made by well-known Chinese craftsman Gu Jingzhou now costs $ 300,000. Those sold in Singapore are mainly Zisha (purple clay) teapots from Yixing in Jiangsu province, Zhejiang and Chaozhou in China, and from Taiwan. The best ones are from Yixing.
The 40-year-old owner of Liu Hsiang Teacraft says the trend of collecting Chinese teapots began six years ago in Taiwan and Hongkong Purple Clay Teapots, with Singapore soon following suit.
Mr David Cheong, 34, the owner the Riverwalk Tea Garden, which sells teapots, says his customers include secondary school students, who can afford to pay about $ 30 for a teapot. He adds that Singaporean collectors can be categorised into three groups: those who like to drink tea; those who love teapots; and those who collect as a form of investment.
Mr Kong Tong Hong, an artist with a collection of 300 Chinese teapots -the most expensive of which is $ 6,000 -says more Singaporeans are buying teapots made by well-known craftsmen.  The 49-year-old says he knows of Singaporeans who are willing to payЎЎYixing teapot as much as $ 25,000 for one. Chinese teapots are good avenues of investment. Their prices can go up by more than 30 per cent a year, he adds.
But many collectors are uninformed, says Mr Lee, who has come across many who boast of a huge collection which turns out to be of inferior quality.
And the value of teapots can depreciate too. Mr Lee says his 10-year-old Yixing teapot was worth about $ 30,000 initially, but is now worth only about $ 5,000. “The market is now flooded with too many imitations from Zhejiang. They have caused collectors to doubt the authenticity and so, even the real ones are not much sought after,” he says.
Says Mr K. K. Lee, an assistant in D’Art Station: “Our shop is not selling more Chinese teapots, but there are more people buying the more expensive ones now. The bestsellers are those worth about $ 100. We sell an average of 100 pieces of these daily.”
The Tea Cultural Society (Singapore) is holding a demonstration at the Orchard Point Exhibition Hall, fourth floor, today at 11.30 am. It will showcase the tea cultures of Britain, Japan, India and China. Admission is free.

Purple prevalent in Taodu Yixing teapots, bodiless and general household ceramics. Yixing teapot, the ancient name of Jingxi, so named because of Jingxi River, later renamed Yangxian Chu Emperor destroyed. King Hui was Yising Yangxian period, he changed. Northern Song Dynasty, in order to avoid Taizong Zhao Guangyi Wei, renamed Yixing and followed so far. Yixing clay rich in a special, its more for the deep plum color, it is referred to purple. But its color is also red, green, yellow, and white, it is also known as “colored earth.” Shall be made to tea with the teapot. Purple discussed the start, see Northern Song Dynasty poet Mei Yao, “Wan Ling set” in a poem goes, “stay stone cold spring morning taste, purple new Pan Chun-hua.” Was generally accepted that began in the Northern Song Dynasty Yixing, Yixing in 1976 in the small mountain of ancient kiln Shu claw unearthed a large number of Yixing pottery, dating to the Song Dynasty, which also can be used as evidence. Purple then ushered in the flourishing art of the spring, and this spring lasted about a few hundred years, has experienced the rise of the Ming and Qing dynasties. The development of the Ming and Qing, purple evolved a culture, tea culture in combination, based on more integration of the poems, paintings, sculpture, stone carving and a series of arts and culture. Multi-cultural nature of marriage, became a symbol of cultural characteristics of purple.