Teapot repair books

[mbanu]

While online the most interest seems to be in kintsugi or maybe Chinese staple repair (锔瓷) due to its exoticism, I thought maybe a thread for general teapot repair books might be helpful to avoid the polarization between this approach and the "Just glue it and don't worry" approach.

Here are the ones I have:

How to Mend China and Bric-A-Brac by Paul St. Gaudens and Arthur R. Jackson (1953)
Mend Your Own China and Glass by Susan Wells (1975)
How to Mend Your Treausred Porcelain, China, Glass & Pottery by Laurence Adams Malone (1976)
The Repair & Restoration of Pottery & Porcelain by Joan Grayson (1982)
China Mending for Beginners by Margot Wissler (1983)

Any others out there?

[Pants404]

The only book I have that is worth reading is
China Mending & Restoration by C.S.M. Parsons & F.H. Curl
It mainly focuses on rivets and related repairs. There is a decent amount of detail and illustrations.

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[mbanu]

Saw another one on sale while picking up some other books, Mending and Restoring China by Thomas Pond, from 1970.

One interesting thing about this one is that Mr. Pond is anti-rivet! In his opinion, it is impossible for a hobbyist to get a waterproof seal with rivets, and as a hobbyist himself (he was a chemical engineer who took up china repair in his retirement) he saw no point in it. The other aspect of course being that as a chemical engineer he had a natural predisposition to look forward to the potential of new adhesives.

WHY TO AVOID RIVETING AND DOWELING

When I started mending china I bought a diamond, clamped it in a nail, built a very efficient Chinese native drill with bamboo and string with which I could drill very neat holes in porcelain -- and never used it to rivet a repair.

I will go further and state that my greatest pleasure now is to find a riveted plate, file through the centres of all the rivets, lever them out, plug the holes with Devcon 2 Ton putty and stick the plate together again.

One must in all fairness admit that before the days of these glues of great strength there was no alternative to riveting, but it had three great disadvantages. First, it is an extremely unsightly method, secondly no riveted jug or cup can hold liquid, and thirdly, rivets are not permanent. Under tension, as they always are, the brass of which they are made loses its spring and they become loose.

With epoxy resins one can now stick together a 20" meat dish which would otherwise need at least twenty rivets. Lids of modern earthenware oven dishes are common household casualties, and, on the face of it, suitable patients for riveting. But they are easily repaired invisibly with epoxy glues so long as they are not put into a very hot oven. (If the dish is used for cooking in the oven, even if you have scrupulously removed all excess glue, a brown line will appear all along the repair with the heat. But even so the lid will be perfectly sound.)

If by doweling is meant the boring of two holes and the insertion of a connecting wire dowel, then I am equally against it. Modern glues are strong and do not need this kind of assistance. If by chance you come across a figure which is hollow in the neck or the limbs, so that there are two matching rings to be stuck, you can whittle down a piece of soft wood, tapered to the shape of the holes, and insert this when you make the join, but it is quite unnecessary and may even complicate the job.

On the other hand, putting a peg on to a broken surface and building a new limb around it must not be confused with doweling and is a very practical measure.

If I seem to have dismissed rather briefly two old-established methods of china mending, it must be remembered that methods do become obsolete. When a method whose result is neither beautiful nor effective is also laborious and difficult to carry out it seems only sensible to discard it altogether.

Devcon 2-Ton Epoxy is still made, although the safety data sheet does not seem very encouraging as far as something that will be in prolonged contact with a hot liquid one plans to drink. Maybe a helpful tool for broken handles?