In the course of exploring new ideas, I often go back to older ideas and review them in the light of what I have learned since that earlier work. After I had started cutting apart and reassembling hand thrown hollow rings, and posing hand-sculpted animal figures on the completed Teapot compositions, I subsequently stopped adding the animal figures and started to explore abstract Reassembled Ring Teapots. The first Teapot I completed in this now many-examples abstract no-animal-figures series is my Pink Pentagonal Cross-Section Reassembled Ring Teapot, completed in the summer of 1998, and featured in the Ceramics Monthly International Competition of March 1999 and subsequently on the cover of the March 2002 Ceramics Monthly magazine. While exploring this new series of ideas, I continued to think about the first Upright Ring Teapots I started making in 1995 with my South American Jaguars Upright Ring Teapot. I decided to try two Upright Ring Teapots without animal figures, and I made a very fat ring like a hollow bagel, and a very skinny large diameter ring, which became this Jet Black Upright Ring Teapot. I added tendrils, stems, and bubbles to the fat ring, and it named it Kelp Forest Undersea Upright Ring Teapot. The skinny large-diameter ring had an elegant presence to which I was greatly attracted. Once completed and turned upright, it suggested to me the ring of fire that surrounds Shiva Nataraj, the dancing Shiva The Destroyer of the Hindu pantheon. I chose our satin gloss black glaze to further the impression of fire. The coiled finial on the lid is meant to continue the line of the coiled base, like an inverted tornado. In this artwork I was looking at my original idea, without embellishments or alterations. I am proud of its elegant simplicity.

This teapot is held in a private collection in Williamstown, MA.

15” Tall x 14” Wide x 5” Deep
Cone10 reduction
This Teapot is held in a private collection in Williamstown, Massachusetts.