Author Archive | Kamm Teapot Foundation
Willow Teapot
This teapot-shaped sculpture has three parts—the teapot-body, a lid, and a base or tray that it sits upon. Kimberly Sotelo, an artist and furniture-maker, created this piece at the request of the art dealer Leslie Ferrin, along with another sculpture titled Tea Pagoda. Willow Teapot, also incorporates a tiered structure in the lid and the […]
Octopus Teapot
This octopus-shaped vessel by Miel-Margarita Paredes is a fully functional teapot with a removable lid over the hollow space in the head that forms the body of the teapot, and a curved tentacle forms the spout. Paredes is a metalsmith and artist known for creating sculptures based on naturalistic animal forms. Some themes in her […]
Black Basaltes Swan Teapot
This stoneware teapot is attributed to Sowter & Company, an early 19th century pottery manufacturer. Sowter & Company—also called Mexborough Old Pottery—was one of several pottery companies in the Don Valley area of Yorkshire, England at the time. Other contemporaneous Yorkshire potters include Rock Pottery (also called Mexborough Pottery or Mexbro’ Pottery), Swinton Pottery, Don […]
Henry’s Teapots
These two works of art were both acquired from the estate of the influential art critic, historian, and collector Henry Geldzahler (1935-1994). Geldzahler began his career as a student in the Harvard Fine Arts Department, but left before completing his doctorate to become a curatorial assistant at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in […]
Tea on the Frontier: Geology in the Kamm Teapot Collection
Writing in his diary on Sunday, September 27th, 1869, William Henry Jackson explained that, “after his afternoon tea, he went to the depot to see the Western train come in and sell quite a few photographs.” Jackson, known as one of America’s most important nineteenth century photographers, documented the wilderness of the American West. Jackson […]
Kamm Family Teapot Drawing
This drawing was commissioned by the Kamm Teapot Foundation from cartoonist and writer Jules Feiffer. Feiffer has drawn and written for numerous projects, including his long-running syndicated comic strip Feiffer and the illustrations for The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. He has won many awards for his work, including a Pulitzer Prize for his political […]
Radiant Energy: Teapot Jewelry
This small sculpture by contemporary jeweler Leah Meleski is a clever use of the teapot form as wearable art. The sculpture is actually composed of a set of jewelry. It disassembles into two bracelets from the teapot handle and body, an earring from the spout, a brooch from the lid, and a pendant from the base. Additional pieces such as the brooch fastener and necklace […]
T-Pot by Garry Knox Bennett
This sculpture is an example of an artwork made specifically for the Kamm Teapot Foundation. As patrons of the arts, Foundation trustees Sonny and Gloria Kamm make a point to commission contemporary artists to make a teapot for the collection, and especially seek works from artists who do not normally make teapots. One artist commissioned […]
Teapot Dome Memorabilia
The Kamm Teapot Collection has several artifacts from the early 1920s about political corruption in the Republican administration of President Warren G. Harding. The Teapot Dome scandal concerned the backroom leasing of public oil reserves and took its name from the oil field near Teapot Rock in Wyoming. This scandal figured prominently in the 1924 […]