I’ve been asking the question:  What is it about tea that inspires art?

My last post featured the glass teapot sculpture of Richard Marquis. Work like his and other fine artists who use the teapot as a theme for non-functional sculpture continues to intrigue me. An teapot artist friend recently suggested that it was the annual teapot competition created by Celestial Seasonings in the late 1990’s that fueled the popularity of interpreting the teapot form in sculptural media. I confess that I was hoping for something more to the spiritual inspiration rather than a tea company’s marketing program. On the other hand, I felt great pride in tea industry that one of the major companies found a way to reward serious artists. The contests continued for about 5 years and artists from every medium were acknowledged. Twenty - thirty works would be selected from hundreds of entries. On the other hand, galleries and art museums have been featuring teapot art for many years. The fact that non-ceramic artists use it in their work isn’t surprising.

But Why Teapots?

It’s a comfortable and easily recognizable form.

They convey sincerity.

It’s a technically challenging form.

Teapots are serious and yet whimsical. . . . . Like tea!

But part of the reason artists create teapots is that museums and galleries organize teapot shows and collectors buy them. And the truth is that of the hundreds of serious teapot collectors in US, many don’t even drink tea.

In a History of Ceramics course I took in the late ’70s there was a story of Kasimir Malevich, a Russian abstract artist (1878-1935) who was asked to design a teapot for factory production. When it was discovered that the teapot didn’t pour well, Malevich is said to have replied, “It’s not about the tea. It’s about the teapot.” Malevich did create several functional designs which are still produced by the Lomonosov Porcelain Factory in St. Petersburg, Russia. Functional, yes. But they aren’t your grandmother’s traditional teapot. The white cups and pot are a current version of his original, selling today for about $500. Looking at it again, I have to remind myself that this work piece was designed almost a hundred years ago.

Media hype? No.

And I believe that this piece is evidence that there is something in the brewing of tea that intrinsically inspires creativity.

Kate Anderson is another extremely non-traditional teapot artist. Her work is waxed and knotted fiber. She began the series in 1988 and has created a body of work seen in major galleries and highly valued by these non-tea-imbibing collectors.

“Making sculptural art forms by utilizing the repetitive basketry technique called knotting forms the basis of my work regarding content and the blurred edges where art and craft meet. High-art/low-art references come into play by utilizing the teapot, a common craft object, as my sculptural archetype juxtaposed with images appropriated from the world of “high art”. Quotation, allusion, abstraction, and art/craft references all play a part as the knotting process simultaneously creates both structure and image.“

I rem

ain convinced that it must be (as they say) “. . . something in the water!”

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