Eccentric Tea Pot

Glazes used: NONE 

The goal for this assignment was to make a teapot, either functional or sculptural, that was based on an idea that was unlike a traditional teapot. I chose to make a fish teapot, I chose a fish because while I was looking for a subject to base my teapot on I was keeping in mind the teapot aspect. By this, I mean that I was thinking about what would be the handle, spout, and lid. To make the body of the fish I made two pinch pots and slipped and scored them together, I used a slab for the two fins on the sides, and for the top fin, I used two thin coils for the eyes, and made a pinch pot for the mouth.

I used the idea of a fish because I noticed that the tail could be the handle, the fin on top would be the lid, and the mouth would be the spout where the tea would come out. One of the biggest ways my project evolved was how the spout/mouth was formed. At first, I was just going to make the mouth kind of like a straw, but I revised it so that the spout was blended into the rest of the pot which makes the design flow much better than it would have. And as you can see in the last three pictures above, because the clay wasn't completely dry all the way through, my fish broke in the kiln.

When this project was introduced I knew I wanted to make some sort of animal but I had trouble deciding on what type of animal to base my teapot off of. So when a fish came up in my search I thought it was perfect. I am most proud of overall how clean the pot looked and how each aspect of the fish, the tail mouth and fins, blended together well. Something I struggled with was the snout/mouth which I talked about a little already, it took some revision but in the end, I finally got the spout to look the way I wanted it to. If I were to go back and do something differently I would give it a day or two more for it to completely dry so it wouldn't have broke in the bisque firing. I would also add more detail to the eyes.