Tiny Teapot

Once in a while, it's good to change your work and challenge yourself to make something completely different.

I've just finished photographing this little piece for entry into a teapot show.

It's made in the style of Yixing teapots. The clay is unglazed, only stamped and burnished. All of it is either slab or handmade.

The teapot is just a bit larger than the photos.

"Cadogan" Style Salt and Peppers

The Codugan teapot design using the inverted inside funnel is also used to make salt and peppers in clay.

I've made dozens of these and sold them at shows. They are real good sellers and are a great way to start a dialogue with customers.

People will pick them up, see that they are salt and peppers, but are puzzled. "Where's the holes?" they will ask.

Sometimes I tell them they're for people on limited salt diets. But then, I show them how they work and they love it.

I usually make them in the shape of pears, since the form lends itself so well to this form, but I've also made them in many different designs.

Here's a salt made by Illinois potter, Paul DreSang.

I attended a workshop and demo about his famous tromp l'oeil leather bags. (See below.)

Beside the 'leather' bags, Paul also makes salt-fired wheel thrown work. He made some pieces available for purchase at the workshop and I bought two pieces which I use nearly every day.

Pictured is a DreSang piece that looks like a rather unique teapot sitting inside a very convincingly-made collapsed black leather bag.

The zipper and metal buckles look real, but they are also made of clay.

The piece is quite large and is part of the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery in Washington D. C. It is in the permanent collection and is on display occasionally.

Cadogan Teapots

The story goes that Lord Cadogan, 1675-1726, fell in love with these little Chinese wine pots and imported them into England to serve tea. The story may or may not be true--some say it was Lady Cadogan who brought them to England. But that's not really here or there except to explain the name.

At any rate, these little pots, which only hold about a cup, were then adapted and manufactured in the English potteries.

Many Victorian examples were larger, brown and with the figure of a squirrel on top.

As you can see, there is no lid. Yet it pours out liquid.

How can that be? The secret of how they work can be seen in this modern glass one.

Inside, an inverted funnel shape is the key. The wide part of the funnel is part of the base; the small opening is at the top.

To fill, turn the pot over (be sure to stop the end of the spout with your finger) and fill with liquid. Turn it right side up again by gently laying it on it's side and inverting. (The side-turn keeps the hole at the top of the funnel clear, although a few drops may escape.)

The liquid that was poured into the top when the vessel is inverted will pool into the bottom of the pot. The liquid cannot rise higher than the top of the funnel-opening. The pot can be filled as high as the inside funnel and up part of the spout. The bottom of the spout is located rather low on the pot for this reason.

For the potter, they are easier to make than you would think. The trick is to make the inner funnel first, then pull the outer walls of the form up around it, leaving the inner cavity fat at the bottom and closing the vessel in at the top. The spout is attached just the same as with a regular teapot, but you must smooth the inner seam without being able to see it.

Here's one I made and (hopefully) it will be accepted into a show coming up.

Those Victorians

I have a wonderful book on Wedgewood. I bought it in the UK years ago. It shows many unusual clay things made during the history of the company.

Like and egg-shaped bell pull.

Now I ask you.

Or how about a Georgian Period egg beater?

A Water Color Set?

(Probably best used by decorative ladies in the parlor.)





But this one.

This one just kills me. It's a tilt teapot.

It is meant to sit two different ways.

See the separate compartment at the top of the pot? It has tiny holes in the bottom or floor of the compartment.

This is where the loose tea leaves go.

Then, the pot is filled with hot water and tilted backward toward the handle. What you cannot see are additional feet at the back. They are designed as a separate set of legs to hold the pot when it is tilted backward. The hot water flows into the top/back compartment through the strainer holes and over the tea leaves.

When the tea has steeped and ready to pour, the pot would be set upright again as shown, the water would flow away from the tea leaf section into the body of the pot.

You would certainly have to hold onto that lid.

Seems like an awful lot of trouble for what appears to be maybe one or two cups of tea.

A Most Unique Pot

While surfing the web for spout examples, I ran across these pots. And pots they truly are!

These are "Coach Pots" or "Bourdaloues".

They are also sometimes called "Banquet","Crinoline", "Ball" or "Sermon Pots".

They originated in France during the reign of Louis XIV.

It seems the court priest, Louis Bourdaloues was known for his hours-long sermons.

And of course, everyone who was in court was expected to attend his services.

The ladies, arrayed in elaborate dresses and petticoats, could not exit to use the facilities without causing a noticeable disturbance, so the use of these little porcelain pots came into use.

Thank heavens for discreet ladies' maids.

Today, these little pots command very high prices at antique sales and auctions.

In all the museums I've visited I have never seen one. But then, of course, they were not made over a long period of time. The one pictured at the left was manufactured in England.

Silver Coffee Service, A Story

When my husband was a young junior Naval officer and we were stationed in Norfolk VA, I was asked to help at a big reception in the Officer's Club on base. The club was a neo-classical, columned building which had been a part of the 1907 Jamestown Exhibition, built on what was then Sewell's Point. Many beautiful and some extravagant buildings were built at the time prior to making it into a Naval base. The O'Club and some buildings from the Exhibition survive to this day.

The main room of the club was appropriately impressive and was set up with a large table at one end. Placed at each end of the table was a massive silver service, much like the one pictured. One end was for coffee, the other for tea. In between was a sea of white and gold-banded teacups and plates of hors d'oeuvres.

I had arrived in my Sunday-best clothes and was asked to sit at one end of the big table and man the coffee pot. And MAN is the operative word here! That puppy was heavy. I began serving coffee sitting, but being 5'2" tall meant that I had to lift that pot high enough to aim the spigot at a cup and not spill a drop. It became immediately apparent this wasn't going to work, so I stood to serve. I was very amused when the lady 'way at the other end of the table stood up also.

New pots of hot coffee were brought out from the kitchen to recharge the pot. By the time my 2 or 3 hours were up, I really felt like I had had a workout!

So let me explain about these silver services. It had been the tradition that early in the Navy's history, large, heavy tea services were part of every major ship and base's equipment for entertaining visiting dignitaries and for important social events. (The service pictured here is one from a battleship*.) They were often made special order from major silver manufacturers and double or triple plated to protect from them the corrosive sea air. While ships were deployed, many times replacement pieces or special pieces were contracted for in the place the ship was moored. For instance, several years ago I found a set of silver finger bowls with the Naval insignia impressed on the sides.

Admiral's messes also had special-order china with the Navy crest and gold banding; heavy silverware was used in the officer's mess. My children thought it was a real treat to have dinner with the officers in the mess when my husband was also standing watch for a night. They learned early how to handle so many spoons and forks. They remember it now as very special and it was.

Today's military does not separate officers from enlisted personnel for food service and the clubs serve combined ranks these days, so many of these heavy silver tea and coffee services are now either in museums, or, in the case of battleships, they have gone back to the state for which the ship was named.

*This set is from the battleship North Carolina.

A Weird Chocolate Pot

Wouldn't you know?

Here's a pot that just disproved all my great theories about handles and spouts.

It looks like a beer stein/chocolate/coffee pot.

Just proves you can find anything on the internet.

But you know, here's the great thing about clay: You can make it into just about Anything.

Whatever you can spin up in your cranium, you can figure out how to make with clay.

For instance, while I was doing a lot of quilting, I got tired of picking up the thread spool, cutting it off in lengths of thread, putting it down, then threading the needle. Sometimes the spool would get misplaced and I'd have to look for it.

I made a little clay spool spinner/holder that could sit on a table next to me and I could whirr the thread off the spool with less fiddling. A bamboo skewer, cut short, fits into a long hole at one end; the other end of the skewer slides down in the opposite side slit.

The extension of clay at one end serves as a small handle.

Coffee Pots

Not many potters make coffee pots. Maybe it's because coffee pots are too complicated. Heat needed at the bottom, perking or dripping the water through, the grounds problem, etc.

Maybe it's because coffee is never (well, hardly ever) moved from the pot that made it.

This is an experimental pot I made just to explore the form. It would work for hot syrup just as well as for one or two cups of coffee, I suppose. Not that a coffee shaped clay piece couldn't be used for tea, mind you.

The exercise got me thinking about coffee pots in general.

Did you know that Chemex® still makes that famous glass drip pot to this day?

(www.chemexcoffeemaker.com)

They now make one without the wooden/leather collar that has a glass handle. Not the funky look, but more practical.

If you wished, I suppose it would be possible to make a pottery one, but then, there's much to be said about watching the coffee being made in glass.

What, in our collective Western minds, distinguishes a coffee pot from a tea pot? The shape.

Coffee pots are nearly always tall with a spout located at the top. Maybe this is because of the need to keep any stray grounds as far away from the liquid as possible.

The original design probably came with the beans from the Arab and African world into Europe. An Arab pot, which is invariably made of brass or other metal has a heavy bottom (for sitting down on sand) and a weighted, hinged lid.

The exception to this is the silver maker's designs which placed a long, S-curved spout on the the coffee component of a silver set. Coffee and tea being served in this manner is always brewed elsewhere and put into the pot. So there's no actual brewing going on here. There were some electric percolators that had a similar design as the silver serving set pot, but that was because we were so in love with everything electric. The design soon died when better coffee could be made in makers like the ones we use today.

Silver chocolate pots often followed the shape of coffee pots, but has the spout or handle, whichever way you want to look at it, offset chocolate offset to one side, signifying it is a chocolate pot. This would seem to be a most awkward way to serve.

During the Victorian era, Limoges and other French and European china makers, as well as Japanese makers, produced chocolate sets that were elongated with the pouring spout located at the top. Most confusing.

I would imagine cleaning congealed chocolate out of an S-shaped spout could be a bit of a drag.

The pots seemed to take on the shape of the fashionable ladies silhouette--that of the 'Gibson Girl' who lost her bustle, gained a slim waist and wore elongated, non-hooped dresses.

Round Answers Round

Round forms make great flower vases. And they are fun to throw on the wheel.

Putting a good lid on a very round form is another matter altogether.

"The Bishop" is a small piece with a totally experimental lid. It may not look it, but this lid really works well as far as ease of grasp and access to the jar. It has a flange inside.

It can be difficult to find a distinctive lid that holds it's own with the form, yet relates to it in design.

This is a fairly unassuming lid on this brown teapot, but then there's a lot of 'round' going on above it.

Same with the large green basket.

I like to see a lot of 'air' in the negative space. It makes you feel you can slip your hand inside the space with no problems.

Relating the curve of a handle with a very round vessel is another design consideration--you want the negative space to be neither too large or too small and to relate well to the roundness of the pot.

Sending Digitals to Juries

I've been involved in lots of shows juries over the years. One of the biggest jobs involving shows is keeping all the entries sorted.

Even within strict parameter rules for entry, things come to jury committees in many forms and one must be meticulous about handling all the material. Some work gets submitted in the most appalling manner.

When you send digital entries, be sure to label the CD exactly as they request. And, as mentioned previously, be sure to use a special pen for writing on disks. If no special format is requested, I always do this anyway. Your name, the show or entry title, the date and any other brief information is enough.

In addition, I compose a paper thumbnail label with the same information to slip inside the jewelbox. Then I make a large CD label that fits into the front of the box.

Most printers will do CD label sizes. If not, figure out the size, print it off and cut with scissors to fit.

The name of the show, your name, mailing address (omitted in the example), phone number and email address and any other information that might be needed should go on the label. If there is any question about your entry, it will be easy for the show committee to get in contact. Your job is to make it as easy as possible to for the jury and committee. Choose a regular disk--not the more expensive read/write kind for your submission.

Don't send a huge, gazillion-pixel image. Stay within the image size they request. They don't want to have to fiddle with your entry. They don't have the time or possibly the computer capacity to handle huge shots.