Soon after I began making Upright Ring Teapots, I started to think about ways to vary the Teapot Ring composition and upright format. Here I made a round cross-section ring, and while it was still soft, but stiff enough to handle without denting, I picked up one side and draped it over some sponges wrapped in plastic. While the Teapot Ring was drying to the stiff leather-hard stage, I sculpted an adult Silverback Mountain Gorilla figure and positioned it as if it were holding up the curved recumbent ring, and perched a juvenile Gorilla figure on the lid. I glazed the Teapot in bands of brown and gray over our bronze green matt to suggest the highland grassy jungle habitat of the vegetarian African Mountain Gorillas. I did not return to this “Recumbent Ring Teapot” idea until I later tried orienting Reassembled Ring Teapot compositions in horizontal formats, but this was an early idea variation I would return to in my later sculptural work. This teapot was accepted in the “National Teapot Show III,” held at the Cedar Creek Gallery in Creedmoor, North Carolina, July-September 1996. An important fact I learned from photographing this Teapot with Jon Barber is that black-glazed figures and black glazes generally (See also my Orca Whale Reassembled Ring Teapot photo) absorb light and do not show details effectively in the photographic image.

8” Tall x 13” Wide x 11” Deep
Cone 5 oxidation Firing
This Teapot was damaged beyond repair in an exhibition and is no longer available.