Strawberry Pink Reassembled Ring Teapot

When I started to cut apart my leatherhard hollow rings, I made straight cuts with my woodsman's bucksaw. Later I tried to cut the ring apart in an irregular pattern with an x-acto knife in my "Sky Blue Torn Ends Square Cross-Section Reassembled Hollow Ring Teapot."With this Strawberry Pink teapot I cut the 5-pointed star cross section ring into 5 arcs with scalloped curving x-acto knife cuts. I softened flat clay slabs and curved them to fit into the open ends of the arc sections, attached them securely, then composed the teapot assembly by re-joining the closed-ended arc sections in a pleasing pattern. Variations on the "V" composition you can see on several of these teapots are most functional as tea servers, because air is let in the lid leg of the "V" as tea is poured out the spout leg. This teapot composition took a particularly long time to complete because there were so many curves to marry together, with the scalloped ends encountering the 5-pointed star cross-section curves of the ring. I think the result is very successful. One of the reasons I like to work with photographer Jon Barber is that he allows me to be present and asks my advice while setting up the camera angles and lighting for each teapot photo. we usually try to show at least one arc section end so the viewer can tell what the original ring looked like. Here the 5-pointed star cross-section is obvious in the profile facing the camera just above the oval base. The composition of the photo revolves around this strong central element, which results in a beautiful balanced photograph.

This teapot is held in a private collection in Dallas, Texas.