Mountain Gorillas Recumbent Ring Teapot

Soon after I began making upright ring teapots, I started to think about ways to vary the teapot composition and upright format. Here I made a round cross-section ring, and when is was still soft but stiff enough to handle without denting, I picked up one side and draped it over some sponges wrapped in plastic. I sculpted an adult silverback mountain gorilla figure and positioned it as if it were holding up the curved recumbent ring, and perched a juvenile gorilla figure on the lid. I glazed the teapot in bands of brown and gray over the bronze green matt, to suggest the highland grassy jungle habitat of the vegetarian African mountain gorillas. I did not return to this “recumbent ring teapots” idea until I later tried orienting reassembled ring teapot compositions in horizontal formats, but this was an early idea variation I would return to in my later sculptural work. This teapot was also accepted in the “National Teapot Show III,” held at the Cedar Creek Gallery in Creedmoor, North Carolina, July-September 1996.

This teapot was damaged beyond repair in a later exhibition and is unavailable.