Teapots have always been a test of my skills as a potter. In the beginning it was about making a teapot where they would look good without any flaws in the construction, and the lid would fit, the handle worked well, and the pot would not be overly heavy when full of tea. As time went on it became a matter of getting that spout to pour well, without dribbling, or spraying tea in a shower storm or without leaving a lot of drip when done pouring. Eventually, I got to the point where the teapots poured pretty well and all things worked.
Teapots have so much of a presence in literature and popular entertainment with personification and animation. How could anyone forget the animated teapots in Beauty and the Beast or Alice in Wonderland. Some of the ways of late that I have been altering the pot form with pressed decoration before shaping and cutting and reassembling the pot before adding spout has lead me to a more whimsical approach to the teapot, as can be witnessed in most of these.
I have included still images of these pots for those of you who do not want to download or wait for video,I can understand. However a video is a great way to see all of the pot.
This first piece is from an earlier load this Summer. The rest are from a load that came out on the 22nd of October.
This teapot is using pulled handle for the lid, and the body with no alteration. The neck of the pot was cut in a manner similar to those done in an earlier blog post that also shows the technique for altering the neck angle.
These pieces from the last load, are darker than what I would have liked originally, but the colors are rich, even and quite deep. The load over fired to cone 7 where I usually fire to cone 6. That is a 31F. degree difference, which in pottery is a lot. In this case though I was lucky, it worked out.
This is the only teapot without an altered neck in this batch. Decoration is done on the body with stamps before shaping.
I was throwing a series of mugs in early August that used a silicone hot bad that had a hexagonal texture on the surface with a hole for hanging. I had been experimenting with techniques to loosen up my forms. Pressing the hot pad into the cylinder before shaping warped the cylinder and gave me a nice surface texture that got distorted when shaping the mug. So I decided to try it for the teapots. This is one of the first with texture on the body, and pressed into the lid handle after pulling it.
That process led me to the following form with the whimsical alligator on the top of the pot. Lots of fun, with the texture from the hot pad on the body of the pot, the handle of the pot and the tail/handle on the lid.
I thought that the lid deserved a close up photo, and I was quite happy the way he turned out.
All of these pots pour very well, the handles are comfortable, the lids fit well, and have vapor lock release holes. The also have provisions to hold the lid on when pouring. Some of them also have a front tab to aid in balance while pouring. However, it is not really needed.
Aesthetically, I could go on with a lot of garble art talk about why and how that means little to so many. I will say that I like the use of the rubber stamps and the silicone texture before shaping. This texture then becomes stretched and distorted interestingly as the pot is shaped by only the movement of the hand inside. It takes a little practice, to not press so hard as to cause a hole when shaping. It also limits to some degree the amount of volume you can add to the cylinder in the shaping process, again to not rip through the form with the texture. I do not like the idea of the texture over the entire form, it needs visual rest areas.
