Mystery teapot... er, THING...

[chamekke]

When my teacher of Japanese tea ceremony was having her (Victorian-era) house and grounds renovated a couple of years ago, the workers found an unusual ornament (?) in the soil.

Oddly enough, it's a teapot! Or rather, a metal something... which includes an ornamental piece shaped like a teapot.

The "teapot" portion of the piece is about 3" high by 5" long, so of course it's not a functioning teapot. It seems to be made of bronze.

You can see clearly from the first photograph that the mechanism is an unusual one, and it's obviously meant to be hung by its hook - possibly to make the lid "clack" when... something... happens. But what, how or why, we don't know!

Here's the first picture. Here the ornament has been hung from the top of a bamboo room divider (surely not what was originally intended):



A slightly closer view:



And a view of the "teapot" from a slightly different angle:



We are absolutely baffled! What do you think this is?

[Trey Winston]

That looks like an oil lamp of the Aladdin variety, aka "rub me and a genie comes out to grant you three wishes". It's very nice looking.

[chamekke]

Ohhhh... we hadn't thought of that. Yes, it does look like a genie lamp. Thanks for the insight!

What do you think the mechanism with hook is supposed to do, though? That's the part that had us really stumped. We imagined, for example, that it might function as a door "bell" or something of that type, but it simply doesn't work right for that. And that hook looks as though it's meant for something very specific...

[Trioxin]

Outdoor lighting? Fill it with oil, hang it from a tree and light it up and see what happens.

[Trey Winston]

I would guess that the hook is simply to hang it from. I'm not sure I understand from the pictures how the mechanism works, or if the lid is somehow attached to the hook. Presumably the lid is chained to the rest of the contraption so it doesn't get lost.
It's a cute little thing, probably worth something, too, since it's an antique.

[tenuki]

my guess is oil lamp or incense burner. What does the inside look like?

[Eastree]

Oil lamp sounds right. It may also explain its location outside the house (the grounds, as you said). But before you just oil and light it, I'd say at LEAST put a wick of some sort into it. Perhaps speak to an antique expert of some sort to find out how to care for it, and whether fire exposure is worth the risk to it.

[Victoria]

My first thought was incense.

[fencerdenoctum]

To me it looks like one of those ornament things tht would hang over a fire in a old school traditional kitchen that would hold a pot over the fire.

What a neat find!

The Tea Sipping Swordsman,
Fencerdenoctum

[CynTEAa]

Do you know anything about the history of the house? I'll guess with Victoria and say incense burner, but it is not very ornate for a Victorian household piece. Maybe for a stable?

[chamekke]

Thank you for all your kind answers! This is really thought-provoking. You know, when we first found it, we even thought it might be a doorbell mechanism?

It's been a while since I've seen the actual object (I took these photos last year when the item had just been discovered), so I'll have to ask my sensei to show it to me again once she returns from Japan.

In the meantime, I can say that there was some patina on the interior of the object, but aside from that, no traces of what it originally contained as far as I could see. Sensei had already given it a thorough cleaning, so, not too many clues there. Still, the next time I see it, I'll take a closer look inside.

Also, I think I was wrong about the age of the house. Upon reflection, I think it is possibly early Edwardian, not Victorian. So that takes us a few years forward.

The stable idea is an interesting one; however, I suspect my teacher is unlikely to know too much about the history of the house (she's a relatively recent owner, and doesn't speak a lot of English). But I have a friend who's something of a local historian, so I may be able to find out, at least, whether there were stables on that street.

Again, I haven't seen this object and examined its mechanism for a while. If I remember rightly, when the item is suspended, the lid of the "lamp" or "pot" is raised slightly due to the chain being taut - but even then, it's a relatively loose tautness, not at all what I expected!

I love the idea of this being a small lamp, but would be reluctant to put in oil and attempt to light it without really knowing what I'm doing. (The wick idea might be good )

The incense-burner idea is interesting, but - one thing I forgot to mention is the size of the piece. The "pot" itself is only about 3 inches across, measuring from the end of the spout to the back. The sole incense I can imagine being burned in such a small container would be incense cones, and if I recall correctly, incense cones are a fairly new phenomenon - dating perhaps from the 1950s or 1960s. Of course, this item could be newer than I think. It's hard to know!

Actually, I'd be more than prepared to show this to an antiques specialist, purely for purposes of identification, but when you don't know anything about its original use, this becomes surprisingly challenging. The one local antiques dealer to whom I showed it drew a complete blank.

P.S. Correction: I just checked Kiyoko Morita's The Book of Incense, and she says that Hata Rokubei of Shoyeido (Japanese incense company) "tried to be as innovative as possible; he created new kinds of incense (including the cone shape) and introduced Japanese koh [incense] at the World Exposition held in Chicaco in 1894. Only four years later, Shoyeido began exporting sets of incense and burners to America..." So it sounds like those cones have been around a lot longer than I thought!