Green Rider Reassembled Ring Teapot

This is my first porcelain Reassembled Ring Teapot, in addition to the approximately eighty cone 5 and cone 10 stoneware Reassembled and Upright Ring Teapots I have made in the last 25 years. It is made from a Sheffield Pottery cone 5 white porcelain sculpture clay body with 15% molochite (white) grog added. The deep scored texture of the teapot is heightened by the translucent green glaze, which pools in the recesses and thins to a more pale color on the high features.

I started by throwing a square-profile ring on the potter’s wheel. Because of the less-plastic character of the porcelain clay compared with stoneware, when I folded the top edges of the hollow ring in toward each other to close the flat top, the clay buckled and rippled. I encouraged this uneven textured surface, anticipating glaze-pooling effects. Separately I also threw a deep bowl with strong throwing lines and squared it, then added vertical finger-marks on the four corners of the squared bowl. I would later invert this thrown bowl and mount the finished Reassembled Ring composition onto it as a base.

When I trimmed the bottom surface of the leather-hard ring, I scored several deep symmetrical concentric rings into the bottom and sides. I cut the leather-hard trimmed ring into six segments of varying length, and sealed the ends with rolled-out clay slabs.

My original plan with this Teapot was to reassemble two separate 3-segment "branches" in a wavy "V" joined only at the base. When I started to reassemble the arc segments, the slightest stress on the reassembled joints caused the less-plastic porcelain clay to crack and split, so I knew I had to modify my plan. I bonded the second segments together halfway up the assembly, and again joined the top two segments together, creating two “look-throughs” reminiscent of Grasshopper Leaping Reassembled Ring Teapot and Blue heron Wading Reassembled Ring Teapot, both found in the Teapots In Private Collections section of this web site. I kept the ripply surface arcs all facing the same way, and consequently the concentric-scored arc segments are seen all together on the back view of the Teapot. This results in two strong but contrasting photo images, both of which I like very much.

I assembled the Teapot’s spout from three intersecting circular slabs, and mounted it on the teapot. My wife Susan suggested that the spout looked too plain in comparison with the highly-patterned arc segments of the Reassembled Ring, so using a compass I traced concentric circles on the first two segments of the spout, then carved out the concentric rings with a knife tool. Susan's suggestion to echo the concentric trimmed score marks of the Reassembled Ring composition was excellent, and visually tied the spout to the arc sections assembly.

I added a pulled handle, cut out the lid with an x-acto knife, and sculpted the lid finial from layered slabs, trying to echo the circular elements of the spout, as well as re-state the tilting-forward orientation of the teapot composition. I glazed the completed Reassembled Ring Teapot composition with our cone 5 pale green glaze.

When our friend Pat, who holds a PHD in Art History, saw the finished teapot, she said it looked like a rider on a horse, and that it reminded her of Wassily Kandinsky’s "Blue Rider" painting from 1903, which had given its name to the Blue Rider Group of modernist painters from that era, including Paul Klee and Franz Marc among others.

I had never heard of this modernist painting movement, and although I did not intend it, I saw her horse-and-rider suggestion in the Teapot composition. I called this Teapot "Green Rider Reassembled Ring Teapot" as a playful reference to the Blue Rider Group and painting.

20” Tall x 12” Wide x 4” Deep

Cone 5 oxidation-fired porcelain
Price: $3,600

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