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The mother-daughter duo, well known in Huntsville for running the popular Westside Fish and Chips restaurant, was asked to visit a neighbour who needed to sell her teapots or else her husband threatened to leave.

“We saved a marriage,” she said, laughing a bit at the memory. “The lady up the road, she had 250 teapots, and her husband said ‘it’s either me or the teapots,’ so mom and I went up there and we picked about 80 of hers out of her collection.”

“That was 25 years ago. She is still married to the same man, same house.”

This tale is one of hundreds Knobelsdorf can tell relating to her family’s teapot collection, most of which lines the shelves at the popular eatery, a collection that at one time numbered more than 700.

But things have changed for the restaurant. The property and building on which Westside Fish and Chips, the coin laundry and the cookie bakery next door — the latter two are owned separately — are up for sale.

Knobelsdorf said only the building and property are for sale, and the restaurant is not. What that means for the future of Westside Fish and Chips is up in the air, according to Knobelsdorf.

In the meantime, she is preparing for the day the sale is finalized by selling the vaunted collection, piece by piece.

“Even if somebody doesn’t want this restaurant and buys the land and building, they’re not going to want hundreds of teapots,” she said. “I’ve probably sold about a hundred now in the past few weeks.”

She said the collection started first with a prank and a “happy face” in the early 1990s.

“There were these Bell workers who used to come in here all the time for breakfast, and there was one guy who drank tea. So one day when Zellers was here, they had these Happy Face teapots on sale, so I bought one just for a joke for him, and served it to him in the Happy Face teapot. But it got to the point where people would say, I want tea, but I want the Happy Face teacups. So I bought a few more of those kinds of teapots … it was just a joke.”

Knobelsdorf said she called her mother, who was in Florida at the time, and told her about the Happy Face teapot incident. Surprisingly, Rose came home with three teapots, one depicting a pig, another a wood stove and a third looking like a piano.

“That’s kind of how it started. We used those for a while, but some of them didn’t like the dishwasher, so the cute ones started landing on the walls, and we’d pick up more, and people would say, ‘hey, I’ve got an extra teapot, you want it for your wall?’ It just went from there.”

Today you can’t turn your head in any direction while seated inside the restaurant without spying a teapot staring back at you, some with faces, others depicting animals, all in different shapes and sizes, most collected by Knobelsdorf, her sister Sharon and mom, Rose, who died last year.

“There’s no theme in which ones we buy. We just have interesting ones or cute ones.”

For those who haven’t been to the eatery in a while, you can see something a little different to the collection. Price tags, many of them ranging from $10 to $20. Knobelsdorf said she has one set that has been valued at around $1,500.

“Not that we expect someone’s going to give us $1,500, but that is what it’s worth.”

Knobelsdorf has resisted for years to sell any part of the collection, despite numerous inquiries. Now with the plans to sell the land and buildings, dismantling the collection makes sense.

“I’ve got some of my favourites and I won’t let them go. There’s one in the Christmas collection that I’ll save before they come on sale.”

If the day comes when the property/land sale goes through and if there are still hundreds of teapots around, Knobelsdorf said she is unsure what she’ll do, maybe donate them to charity.  

“Or I’ll have a couple of bins in my garage. I don’t know, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

What if her husband Chris said it’s either the teapots or him?

“I think if I keep them stored nicely, he won’t care,” she said with a laugh.