Things we love: The Metal Teapot Birdhouse

We stumbled upon this at a gift fair just before Christmas: a little bird house fashioned from an old metal teapot.

It's not got a great deal to do with board games, but we thought 'got to have that for outside the office'... before we cracked and gave it as a Christmas gift to an enchanted bird-lover.

The spout provides drainage; an old spoon acts as a front step, and the flying prongs of a pair of forks hold those delicious fat balls. There are also a couple of abstract glass marble holders 'for bling' (as the maker explained to us.) Because all birds need a bit of bling, especially in the bleak winter months.

'The Maker' turned out to be a genial fellow called Tel Turnbull, a potter, artist and craftsman with all sorts of imaginative wares on his stall. We'd seen a porcelain one before, but never a metal teapot birdhouse, and there's always a warm feeling about the creation of something of minor wonder from an item that's so functional and everyday.

The artist had four or five more on his stall but - alas - that's the end of the line for the metal teapot birdhouse. Why? Because nobody uses metal teapots any more, he explained. Once they were ten-a-penny, bog standard things that he'd pick up by the dozen at boot sales. Now? The supply of metal teapots has dried up, and he'd found himself trawling Ebay for them when he should have been doing art and stuff. So that's it for the metal teapot birdhouses, unless you have a stash of old teapots lying around that you can send him?