"Mama Bear’s Cold Care Tea" Upright Ring Teapot

When I made this teapot I was responding to a call for proposals for a national exhibition, “Celestial Seasonings: A Loose Interpretation II,” held February to June, 1997, at the Celestial Seasonings Corporate Headquarters Gallery in Boulder, Colorado. The format required the artist to choose one of their tea products and make a clay art sculpture using that product as the theme. I went to our local food coop and looked at all their tea boxes, finally choosing the “Mama Bear’s Cold Care Tea” because it had koala bears and kangaroos on the box illustrations, and I thought they would fit into the ring teapot format and would be fun and challenging to sculpt.

My proposal was accepted, and I made this teapot for the exhibition, with koala bear mother and baby figures inside the ring and handle, and mother kangaroo with baby “joey” perched on the lid. I glazed the teapot with a tan matt glaze printed with green and brown bars to suggest the desert and eucaluptus forest habitats of these two Australian animals. I thought the teapot came out well, and it turned out to be the only piece in the exhibition that sold to a member of the public, although it was not selected by the jurors for an award. I was, however, ultimately uneasy with the composition, because outside of the constraints of the exhibition requirements, There was no real reason in my mind to combine kangaroo and koala bear figures in a teapot composition. I decided in the future to make my one-of-a-kind teapots without conforming to outside constraints, and try to find appropriate exhibition venues after completing the artwork.

This teapot is held in a private collection in Charlotte, North Carolina.