During the last six years I have been exploring the hand thrown ring form, making and altering round, square, triangular, pentagonal, oval, and distorted cross-section hollow rings on the potter's wheel, then composing teapot forms by adding thrown ovoid bases, necks, lids, finials, spouts, and pulled handles. Most recently I have been cutting the leather-hard hollow ring forms apart with a woodsman's bucksaw, then reassembling the separate arc sections into a pleasing composition with hand building methods, and subsequently adding hand thrown and pulled elements to form a teapot.

I have seen hand thrown ring vases from various time periods and cultures throughout the world, the earliest so far being an earthenware clay ring vase I saw in August 1999 in a display case in the British Museum, dated to 340 BC and made in the Apulia region of what is now central Italy. I have seen a sixth-century ring vase from Kofun Dynasty Japan, and I have also seen ring vase examples from Tang, Song, and Ming Dynasty China, ninth-century Moorish Spain, twelfth-century Persia, and an eighteenth-century American colonial ring-form pilgrim flask made in what is now New Jersey.

I have never seen a ring-form teapot, but there must have been a potter somewhere at some time adding a spout, handle, and lid to a ring-form vase. I can’t believe I have invented this variation on such a widespread classic form.