Eccentric Teapot

For this project, we had to create a teapot. It could be either functional or sculptural. The teapot we created had to be inspired by something. For my teapot, I chose to base it on the deep sea. I wanted to choose a creature that is found down there. I decided I would do an octopus. This seemed like the best option because they have a lot of tentacles. These tentacles could be easily incorporated into a teapot by acting as a handle and, possibly, a spout. Originally, I was going to make a tentacle the spout, however, the tentacles I had already imagined on the pot were thin, and the spout would have to be thick. I thought this would look weird, so I decided I wanted the spout to be a bottle held by the tentacles. 

I started this project by deciding how I wanted to build the body of the teapot. The two options I came up with were a pinch pot or a coil pot. I decided on the coil pot. I rolled out my coils and created a base to attach them to. As I continued to roll and attach the coils, I ran into a problem where the coils were thinner in some parts than others because I had hand-rolled them. The spot that was thin, I decided, would be where the spout would go because it would be cut out anyway. I rolled more coils for the tentacles and a ball for the head. I attached those to the pot and then created a lid. The lid needed a handle, so I put a ship on the top to act as a handle. When creating the bottle for the spout, I realised that making a bottle would be a lot harder than I expected. So instead, I decided to create a regular spout.

Once it was fired, I picked the glazes. I wanted to use only a few colors, so I chose two that reminded me of the ocean. I picked a shiny dark blue for the base of the teapot and a brown for the octopus and the boat. Overall, I think the structure turned out good, and it looks like a teapot. I don't exactly know if I love the glaze choices because of how dark they are and how little contrast they have.