A (big) spot of tea

  CHESTER, W. Va. - Yes, this is a big teapot. No, it just sits there and looks pretty.
  It's a remnant from the days where this thumb of northern West Virginia, along with southeastern Ohio, was a big force in the ceramic industry. Across the bridge from Chester, in East Liverpool, Ohio, is the Museum of Ceramics.
  On this side of the bridge is a huge abandoned factory that is plagued with asbestos and has become problematic to get rid of, but that's another story.
  Anyway, the teapot was built in 1938 as a wooden barrel for a Hire's Root Beer ad campaign. Food was sold from within the barrel (note the windows), until it was abandoned in the 1960s. In the late 1980s and early 1990s the town restored its precious teapot, and today it sits on the West Virginia side of the Jennings Randolph Bridge on U.S. 30.