When you wake up to this:

it’s like, seriously?-I’m-so-done-with-winter! I mean really, it’s mid-April.

Even the snowdrops—which are supposed to be blooming in the snow—seem to have given up all hope.

Perhaps a cheery cup of tea to brighten the Gray, gray, endlessly and persistently gray skies. . . .

Dreaming of sunny tulips and blue skies perhaps?

This vintage Dutch Girl Teapot was from Lefton, a porcelain import company that was founded in the U.S. by George Zoltan Lefton in 1941, three years after fleeing Nazi Hungary. The company eventually employed over 400 people and had eighteen showrooms. According to his obituary, George was

known as “The China King” for his work in porcelain imports. . . . [and] developed current practices in the porcelain giftware industry.

A few years after George’s death in 1996, the company was sold.

How my grandmother came to have this teapot I have no clue. She was neither Dutch nor, to my knowledge, a tea drinker.

However, she—like Lefton, an immigrant to the U.S.—may have found this kitschy teapot beguiling with the girl’s slightly wistful, slightly sad, faraway expression.

And perhaps dreaming of something more profound, more significant. That which remains hidden. . . .

Source: Chicago Tribune, “George Zoltan Lefton,” June 2, 1996.