Catalog #: 33
Photo by Jon Barber |
Pacific Puffins
(Spring Plumage) Reassembled Ring Teapot
17" tall x 13" wide x 4" deep
The first animal I sculpted, using a series of "anatomically
correct" Roger Tory Peterson drawings from our bird guidebook,
was done about 1992, an Atlantic Puffin perched on a closed-form box.
A photo of this “puffin box” can be seen on the 3rd page
of my November 1995 Ceramics Monthly article, “Teaching In The
Studio,” available in the “Articles” section of
this web site. I returned to puffin sculpting in 1996, soon after
I made my first reassembled hollow ring teapot, the “Keel-Billed
Toucan Reassembled Hollow Ring Teapot.” Pacific Puffins roost
and breed in the spring in colonies on islands off the west coast
of North America, and spend the balance of the year on the open waters
of the Pacific Ocean. Their beaks are more brightly colored during
spring mating season, and their distinctive “eye horns”
stick up sharply during this time. The males gather fish from the
sea and bring them in their beaks to the females incubating the eggs
or guarding the nestlings in shallow tunnels dug into the sea cliffs.
I tried to give a feeling for the steep cliff-side nesting colonies,
with crowds of puffins perching on every available rock and overhang,,
in this teapot composition. I chose a matt blue-gold glaze for the
teapot body to imply the open ocean habitat of these handsome and
hardy seabirds.
This teapot is held in a private collection in Washington, DC. |
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