Torn Open Rough Rusty Pillow Teapot

This teapot is not an upright ring or reassembled ring teapot, but I am displaying it here because I think it is a worthwhile artistic experiment. During a recent 8-week pottery class session, I was working with a talented college student with advanced throwing skills. He could center and throw large shapes, but he lacked artistic focus. Rather than assigning him specific shapes, I tried to help him find his own direction by challenging him with unfamiliar approaches to the raw material of our chosen medium, clay.

I had collected a bucketful of rusty, scaly, junky clay from pugmill and clay-mixer scrapings, and together we soaked it down and wedged it up, being careful not to cut our hands. We divided it into two equal portions, and I challenged him to a “make-a-striking-unique-shape-with-this-rough-rusty-clay” contest. He made a wonderful large sphere-like closed form, into which he embedded broken car windshield glass bits, which melted, ran, and combined with the rust chunks during the cone 10 firing to make a clay sculpture with great presence.

I divided my rough clay into two lumps, and made a closed form “pillow,” and a round cross-section ring. My original plan was to combine these two elements into a sculpture, but I decided instead to make each shape into a teapot, reinforcing the rough casual nature of the rusty, chunky clay with quick, don’t-look-back shaping and texturing actions. I plopped the closed form “pillow” on its side and gashed it open with a knife, arcing the pulled handle over the torn opening. I added a boldly-thrown spout, glazed the inside of the completed teapot dark blue, and painted a dark blue spiral pattern overall, leaving most of the rust-chunk-filled clay unglazed. The cone 10 reduction firing melted and burned the large rust chunks, leaving a cratered, rough, pitted, runny, striped surface. All the elements of this teapot combine to tell a lively and compelling story of how it came to be, and reminds us of how many languages the rich and varied voice of our chosen medium of fired clay can speak!

This teapot is for sale.
Price: $800

If you are interested in purchasing it please visit the Ordering Information section.

In addition to my unique reassembled ring teapots, my partner Susan Nykiel and I also make a wide range of functional and elegant pottery pieces. Please visit our new online store at oakbluffspottery.etsy.com to see what we have to offer! This is an excellent place to shop for beautiful handmade pottery for your own home or for your gift-giving pleasure.