When we arrived here in India we actually bought a proper stainless steel teapot. Unfortunately, it must have been dropped on the floor at some point and the spout developed a really bad leak at the point where it joins the body. It would be reasonably easy to solder back on but here I just don't have the DIY gear I have back home.
We looked for another teapot but surprisingly we couldn't find anywhere they sell them. You see here in India, everyone makes tea in a pan on the stove, then they add and boil the milk, often together with ginger and masala spices. Hence the rarity of what we would consider the traditional teapot.
Of course, we could just buy tea bags, they are readily available in stores here, but in all our married life, just a little over 40 years now, we have always used loose tea. I know tea originally came from China but to me India is the home of some of the best tea in the world. Personally, I hate teabags, they make a lousy cup tea and why change the habits of a life time?
When I was in a local crockery and pots and pans store asking if they had any teapots, they looked rather vaguely at me and showed me a cafetiere, otherwise known as a French Press coffee maker. So I bought it and now we use it for making tea in.
It has been a rather wonderful discovery really; making tea in a cafetiere. It has several advantages over the traditional teapot. First, as it is made of glass, you can judge the strength of the brew you want by the colour the tea has reached. Then you push the plunger down and all the tea leaves are trapped under the plunger and the tea is ready to pour; you don't need a separate tea strainer. The perfect cup of tea, with no annoying tea leaves in the bottom.
Why didn't I think of this years ago