The Blazyes’ landline has been ringing non-stop. As if on cue, Sue Blayze’s phone rings. “Keith, you take this one. Take messages,” she says to her husband. “Where were we?”
The attention has come since the Blazyes listed their home and family business, a teapot museum, for sale at the end of last year. Since then, they have appeared in local and national press and been interviewed for television, with interest growing since the property was relisted in July. Despite trying to sell the museum and adjoining café, they have found it busier than ever.
“There’s been so much going on,” says Blazye, 73. “I don’t think I’d like to be a film star — I don’t know how they cope with the stress of it.”
Located on its own island — Teapot Island — at the meeting of the Teise and Medway rivers near Yalding, Kent, Sue and Keith Blazye have run the museum since 2003 and live above it. Inside, there are 8,450 teapots of every description: traditional china, politicians, animals, Disney characters, Christmas, millennium-themed, celebrities, musicians, cars, birds, the Beatles.
“Everything you can dream of has been made into a teapot,” says Blazye, who has around 1,000 further duplicates in her loft which she sells in their shop. “They are history in the making.”
Blazye’s collection began with a gift from her grandmother in 1983: a blue and brown terracotta clay teapot, hand-painted with flowers. A second pot from another relative followed and, once guests saw them in the cupboard, Blazye started to receive more. When she discovered the world of novelty teapots, with its seemingly limitless variety of shapes and designs, her collection grew faster.
Manufacturers began to send brochures, people donated their teapots — sometimes leaving them to the Blazyes in their wills — and, as her collection accumulated, Blazye’s passion began to rub off on her husband and son. They’d attend trade fairs, antique sales and pottery open days together, where they’d arrive as early as possible to beat the competition.
“I fell in love with the novelty ones, and then I wanted one of everything. We got the price lists every year; [we went to] the trade fairs; people got in touch with us and we bought anything that we didn’t have,” says Blazye. “Wherever we go, we always look for them.”
Blazye’s favourite teapot is called Cupid’s Cloud, depicting two plump, rosy Cupids on the fluffy white cloud of the teapot. One, sprawled on his back with golden curls, forms the lid of the teapot, which is stood on a white pedestal with blue fish for legs.
Nowadays, it is rare for the Blayzes to find a teapot that they don’t already own. “It’s getting really hard,” Blazye explains. “We don’t see many at all, really.”
They have not had their collection valued, but Blazye says that a “normal price” for a teapot was around £50 (she would buy at trade price), with rarer models rising significantly in value. On eBay, for example, it is not unusual to find novelty teapots fetching over £500. Blazye sees the teapots as an investment and expects the collection to rise in value.
For Blazye, though, money has never been the primary motivation. She and Keith had run a garage in London and relocated to Yalding in 2002 to open the museum. They did it, says Blazye, “because of the pleasure I knew they gave me — I wanted to give [that] to other people. The instinct was: ‘I’m sure people will enjoy them. Let’s open them to the public.’”
Still, starting the museum was a risk. After buying the property, they built an extension down the side of the main building to house the collection and opened almost a year later, in September 2003. There is also a café, shop and further retail space onsite, with a car park and beer garden with riverside views.
“It wasn’t busy at first, because nobody knew about it. That was the chance we took,” says Blazye. “We have had loads of people come — it’s surprising how many. But in the last couple of weeks it got busier all of a sudden, because people were finding out about it at once.”
Over the past 20 years of running the museum, they have been visited by famous faces like actor Tim Spall, the late comedian Victoria Wood, antiquarian Eric Knowles and, in 2014, Prince Charles and Camilla. The Teapot Museum is featured on a local Monopoly board (Blazye picked up 20 copies), has appeared in a number of television programmes and the Blazyes have won the Guinness World Record for their collection twice.
“I’ve enjoyed meeting the people and showing them my beautiful teapots most,” says Blazye. “It’s seeing the amazement and the look on their face when they come out and love them…This place has the wow factor.”
At 73 and 69, the plan was for the Blayzes’ son Luke, 42, to take over the museum. But, with Luke’s wife unwell, his responsibilities have changed, and he no longer has the capacity to run Teapot Island. “It’s not because I want to leave the beautiful spot on the river. I don’t. I don’t want to leave my teapots, but between the three of us, we don’t have the energy or time to run the place properly,” says Blazye. “I’ll miss talking to the people — we’ve known a lot of them for a very long time.”
The four-bedroom property, which covers 4,089 sq ft and sits on 0.75 acres of land, has been listed for £950,000 with Nationwide Business Sales. With its Gross Development Value estimated at over £2 million, it has been marketed as a “unique opportunity to create a very special hospitality offering”, potentially as a pub, restaurant, wedding venue or collection of holiday homes.
The Blazyes, though, are hopeful that a buyer will continue their legacy and keep the museum running. And for the right buyer, Blazye is willing to lease her entire teapot collection. “In my heart, I’d rather take them with me, but it would be good for them if they leased them from me, because the teapots are what makes this a tourist attraction.”
If this doesn’t materialise, what will happen to the teapots? “I would take them with me, definitely. I don’t want to sell them. I want to keep them together. It’s taken me 40 years to collect them.”
She adds: “Maybe it is the time to stop buying them, but I don’t think I’m going to like that.”
