Queensland coffee and tea museum Coffee Works puts collection up for auction
One of the biggest collections of coffee- and tea-making equipment in the world - now on display in north Queensland - is about to go up for sale.
Its owners, Annie and Rob Webber, hope the new buyer will move the entire trove to a location that will attract more visitors than their museum in Mareeba in the Atherton Tablelands has been able to.
"The collection is really of worldwide significance," Rob says. "We would be thrilled if it ended up in Paris, Rome, London or New York. That is really where it belongs."
The 1600-piece collection was put together by Ian Bersten, a Sydney coffee roaster and founder of Belaroma Coffee.
Bersten spent nearly 40 years hunting through historical archives and patent offices in Europe and America, and the collection contains the first example of nearly every type of coffee maker, from plungers to percolators and espresso machines.
Among the treasures are an original 1936 Chemex pot, a 1920s Cona vacuum brewer from England and a General Electric Dripolator Coffee Cassette, made in Japan in the early 1990s.
There's a range of glass and metal plungers from the US, Japan and Europe from manufacturers such as Bodum, Melior and Hario as well as an 1890s French precursor to the percolator, which Bersten has described as "one of the most important pieces in my collection".
Among the rarities is a Brazilia, one of only two espresso pots made completely in Australia, by postwar Italian immigrants.
Three of the most significant items, Rob says, are a 1948 Gaggia, the first lever-operated machine, which gave us the modern espresso; a Lebrun from France, one of the first espresso coffee makers (from 1838); and a 1906 Ardovino automatic domestic coffee maker: when the alarm clock rang, the cover over a spirit lamp opened revealing the wick, which was lit by a match striking emery paper. When brewed, the coffee fell into a glass, which overbalanced, extinguishing the lamp.
Apart from coffee and tea makers, the collection includes a mass of other equipment: coffee roasters, teapots and caddies, filter paper dispensers and even special tea and coffee cups with sippy-style spouts for use by hospital patients.
The Webbers have been roasting coffee at Coffee Works in Mareeba since 1988 and they bought the collection in 2005. At the time, most of the items were packed in boxes in a Sydney warehouse and when the couple opened their museum it was the first time the whole collection had been on display.
"With the collection as a central focus we proceeded to tell the story of coffee," Annie says. "We combined the facts, myths, legends and stories of coffee as a social, political and cultural lubricant and created the museum to appeal to as broad an audience as possible."
The Webbers hope the sale will raise capital for a new as-yet-undisclosed venture.
"We are selling it as an entire visitor experience, with all the visual, audio and physical infrastructure we created," Rob says.
The move comes at a difficult time for tea and coffee museums: London's Bramah Tea and Coffee Museum closed in 2008 after opening in 1992, though negotiations reportedly continue over a new site, while the Johann Jacobs Museum in Zurich, which opened in 1984, has expanded its focus on tea and coffee to also include oil, rubber, diamonds, cotton and tobacco and other "basic commodities of modern life", its website says.
The Bersten collection will be offered for sale as one lot in an online auction running from January 1 to May 1, 2015. See berstencollection.com.