“After 31 years at the wheel, I’m letting the kiln go cold” – Nedra (71) is selling the last of her hand-painted teapots at a special price. The pot that made her name is being retired.

For 31 years, Nedra Rinehart has thrown and painted every teapot by hand in her garage in East Liverpool, Ohio. Now the last 283 are leaving her shelves – and there will never be another.

East Liverpool, late October. The old garage behind Nedra’s house, on a hillside above the Ohio River, smells of wet clay, kiln dust and Earl Grey. Shelves line the cinder-block walls, holding teapots at every stage – grey and raw, chalk-white from the first firing, and finished ones glowing with pink roses, red blooms and tiny songbirds. On the bench sit a jar of brushes worn to a point, a sponge, a wire for cutting clay. Nedra pulls up to the wheel the way she has every morning for the last 24 years. But this fall is different. It is her last.

“I’m 71,” she says, and holds up her hands. The knuckles are swollen. “It’s the arthritis. Throwing a pot is all wrists – you have to hold a spinning lump of clay dead center, and my wrists won’t hold it anymore. Some mornings I can’t close my fingers around a brush until the second cup of tea.” The house is too big for one person now, too, and her daughter Lori has a little apartment ready for her ten minutes from her own place in Columbus. But that isn’t why she is stopping. “If my hands still worked, I’d take the wheel with me. They don’t.” Then she shakes her head at something else. “Go look in any big store. Every pretty teapot has a sticker where the painting should be. Hardly anybody makes them by hand anymore.”

31 years, more than 7,000 teapots – and it all started with one pot for two

Nedra has done the counting. For 28 years she painted roses onto dinner plates at a dinnerware plant down by the river, and in 1995 she started throwing her own pots in the garage in the evenings. When the plant closed in 2002, the garage became her workshop for good. The first teapot she ever threw at home was a gift for her husband, Darrell, on their 19th anniversary in 1995. It leaned a little, and the lid rattled. Darrell loved it. Every afternoon at four, he set it on the kitchen table and said the same thing: “One pot, two cups. Nobody gets up till it’s empty.” For 26 years, nobody did. Darrell passed in 2021. Nedra still sets out two cups at four. These days the second one belongs to her neighbor June, widowed the same winter, who walks across the yard for it. “A mug is for drinking,” Nedra says. “A pot is for staying.” Friends asked for one like it, then their daughters did, and in 31 years more than 7,000 teapots have left this garage.

What makes Nedra’s teapots so different

It isn’t only the roses – the big pink blooms on the belly, the red flowers running down the spout, the little bluebird perched on the side. It’s how each pot is made: thrown by hand on the wheel, painted by hand, and fired so it lasts a lifetime of afternoons.

Nedra paints her roses straight onto the bare clay. Then a clear glaze goes over the top, and pot, paint and glaze are fired together in the kiln. The painting ends up sealed beneath a layer of glass – it can’t peel, it can’t scratch off, and it won’t fade at the sink. The walls are thrown thicker than a factory pot, so they hold the heat: the second and third cups pour nearly as hot as the first. The spout is pulled by hand and cut at a sharp angle, so it pours clean and stops clean, with no dribble down the side. And the tall gold-tone handle arches high above the lid, out of the steam, so the pot can be lifted and passed across the table. It stands 6.7 inches tall, 5.1 inches across the base, and holds about four good cups – enough for two people and a long conversation.

The result is a teapot that does more than pour tea. It sets a table. It gives people a reason to sit back down.

“Some of my customers have poured from the same pot for twenty years”

Nedra reaches up to a shelf above the wheel for a dented tin recipe box. There are no recipes in it – only cards and letters, packed edge to edge. “Thank-you notes. Some of these ladies have written every Christmas for twenty years,” she says. She pulls out one dated 2004: “Dear Nedra, we have used your teapot every single day since our wedding. It has been washed more times than I can count, and the roses look exactly like the day you painted them.”

The reason is patience. A factory prints a sheet of roses onto thousands of pots a day. Nedra makes one at a time. A single teapot takes most of a week from wet clay to finished piece: throwing, trimming, pulling the spout, drying, a first firing, painting every flower, glazing, and the final firing.

The end of an era – and one last chance

On November 30, Nedra will fire the kiln for the last time. “There’s no one to take it over. Nobody wants to learn this anymore – it takes years before the clay starts listening to you.” 283 teapots are left on her shelves and in the drying room. The last pots her hands will ever make.

To be sure they end up on good tables, she has made a decision her family didn’t expect: a clear special price on every one. “I don’t need the money. I want these pots on kitchen tables where people actually sit down together – with folks who understand what goes into one,” Nedra says. “My grandkids Brynlee (24) and Cody (27) are selling them online for me. I wouldn’t know where to start with all that computer business,” she adds with a laugh.

It was Cody who gave the pot its name. “He grew up at that table at four o’clock with his grandpa,” Nedra says. “He said there was only one thing to call it.” The Four O’Clock Pot stuck. And for a lot of her customers, a simple teapot has turned into a daily ritual: put the kettle on, set out two cups, and call someone over.

Why Nedra’s teapots stand apart:

• Thrown on Nedra’s own wheel: Every pot is shaped, trimmed and finished one at a time in her Ohio studio – no molds, no conveyor belt.
• Painted by hand, sealed under the glaze: The roses are fired in beneath a layer of clear glaze, so they never peel, scratch off or fade.
• Keeps the tea hot: The thick hand-thrown walls hold the heat, so the second and third cups are as good as the first.
• A clean, drip-free pour: The hand-pulled spout is cut at a sharp angle – no tea running down the side, no rings on the tablecloth.
• A handle that stays out of the steam: The tall gold-tone arch rides high above the lid, so the pot lifts and passes easily across the table.
• Limited: Only 283 teapots left from Nedra’s final firing – when they’re gone, there will be no more.

What customers say about Nedra’s teapots

• ★★★★★

  “I didn’t think a teapot could change my afternoons. I make a pot at three now, sit by the window and actually slow down for once. The roses are even prettier in person – you can see the little brushstrokes.”

  – Donna R., 63, Akron, Ohio
• ★★★★★

  “I’ve had cheap printed teapots where the pattern wore off inside a year. This one gets washed every day and still looks brand new. You can tell the difference the moment you pick it up.”

  – Pamela J., 58, Lexington, Kentucky
• ★★★★★

  “My husband and I started doing a pot after supper instead of turning on the TV. Four cups is just right for the two of us, and it stays hot the whole time we talk.”

  – Gail W., 67, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
• ★★★★★

  “I bought it for myself after my mom passed – she always had a pot going. Now my granddaughter asks for ‘tea at Grandma’s’ every Sunday. That’s exactly what I hoped for.”

  – Rhonda S., 54, Chattanooga, Tennessee

“The gift that gets the family back around the table”

Her customer Kathy D. (49) from Fort Wayne, Indiana, says it best: “I gave my mother one of Nedra’s teapots for her birthday last month. She’s been on her own since Dad died, and she held it like it was something precious – because it is. Now every Sunday she calls and says, ‘The pot’s on, are you coming?’ We haven’t missed a Sunday since.”

Where can you get Nedra’s teapots?

Nedra’s teapots are only available through Backroad Goods – an online shop that specializes in real handwork from selected makers. Her grandkids Brynlee and Cody run Nedra’s own little corner of the shop there. Only there will you get the original teapots from her studio. Look-alike teapots have started turning up on Amazon and Temu. At first glance they seem similar, but the roses are a printed transfer stuck onto the surface – and they tend to fade, scratch and chip within months. They have nothing to do with Nedra’s work.

Only until November 30 – then the kiln goes cold

Nedra plans to fire her last kiln load at the end of November. “I’d like every one of these pots on somebody’s table by Christmas. After that, that’s it,” she says quietly. Then she smiles. “Thirty-one years. It’s been a good run.”

Brynlee and Cody will keep shipping the finished pots after November 30, as long as any are left on the shelves. But with the special price and this much demand, the last 283 are not expected to last long.

It is the last chance to bring a piece of real American handwork to your table – before Nedra’s roses are gone for good.

The verdict

The Four O’Clock Pot is the teapot people fall for at first sight. It is thrown and painted by hand in Nedra’s studio, and it brings something back to the kitchen table that a mug never could – a reason to pour a second cup and stay a little longer.

A piece with real heart: beautifully painted, built to last, and thought through down to the spout. Every afternoon it gets set out is a small, warm moment worth having. Thank you, Nedra!

Readers keep sending us photos of their Four O’Clock Pot

• ★★★★★

  “It breaks my heart that makers like Nedra are the last of their kind. I ordered two right away – one for our kitchen and one for my sister in Oregon. Now we text each other a picture of our four o’clock pot every day.”

  – The Kowalski family, Toledo, Ohio
• ★★★★★

  “Heavier and better made than I expected, and the little bird on the side is my favorite detail. It keeps the tea hot through a whole episode of my show.”

  – Linda T., Asheville, North Carolina
• ★★★★★

  “It lives in the middle of our table now. My grandchildren argue over who gets to pour, and nobody leaves until it’s empty – just like the story says.”

  – Barbara N., Grand Rapids, Michigan
• ★★★★★

  “Absolutely beautiful. Every guest asks where it’s from, and I get to tell them about Nedra. That alone was worth it.”

  – Teresa K., Bozeman, Montana
• ★★★★★

  “Bought one for my aunt’s 80th. She’s collected teapots all her life and says this is the prettiest she has ever owned. She has her friends over every Thursday now just to use it.”

  – Megan R., Wichita, Kansas