The City of Cape Town will host the Collectors and Hobbies Expo from 6 to 8 August 2009 at the Goodwood Civic Centre.

Co-ordinated by the City’s Arts and Culture Department: Tygerberg Museum Services since 2001, the event showcases some 40 unique exhibits from all over Cape Town.

This year, Lynette Veldtman of Bellville will exhibit her fascinating collection of international teapots for the first time on Saturday, 8 August. She purchased some of them from China, Thailand, Bulgaria, Slovakia, England and Tunisia.

An avid traveller, Lynette started collecting teapots in 2000. Today she has about 25 exotic and rare specimens in what is possibly the most unusual private collection of teapots in South Africa.

"One of my most prized items is a traditional Thai teapot which I bought at a beachfront stall in Phuket shortly before the catastrophic tsunami devastated the business," she says.
Other striking items include a teapot for stamp collectors in the form of a traditional Royal Mail letter box, one for 'book worms' shaped like a stack of books, and a teapot in the shape of London's famous Big Ben clock tower.

The piece de resistance is an elaborate porcelain teapot from The Teapottery in England, which is in the shape of a miniature Aga stove, resplendent with roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, gravy and peas.

Another interesting exhibitor at this year's expo is the Western Cape Model Boat Club and the Cape Town Scale Model Ship Club. About eight members will be displaying 40 scale models of warships, tugs, yachts and Thames barges.

Johan Bulterman of Brackenfell will exhibit exquisite scale models of mostly South African Navy warships from 1943 to 2003, as well as a few civilian ships.

The Hobbies Expo will also feature displays of fireman’s regalia, model trains and cars, memory boxes, paintings, porcelain dolls, succulents, coins and stamps, and crafts such as knitting, quilting, scrap booking and woodcarving.

The Genealogical Society will host free workshops on how to research family trees as a hobby.

"Our aim is to encourage people to preserve their cultural and natural heritage through hobbies and collecting," says Ria Briers of Tygerberg Museum Services.

The exhibition will be open to the public free of charge. Opening hours are from 09:00 to 17:00 on 6 August, from 09:00 to 19:00 on 7 August, and from 10:00 to 14:00 on 8 August. For more information, please contact Ria Briers on 021 590 1750 or 084 247 2715 or
Louise Ing on 021 938 8020 or 082 771 6915.