Billie Jean Theide is an American artist known for creating sculptures and ornamental works in both metal and ceramics, which sometimes also incorporate found-objects or recycled materials. She is also an art professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a curator of many exhibitions, and served as the President of the Society of North […]
Lurelle Van Arsdale Guild accomplished more in one lifetime than most would attempt in seven.[1] Guild was an avid collector of antiques, a successful illustrator, an accomplished writer, an amateur architect, and most importantly for our purposes here, an industrial designer. Guild had an immense impact on American industrial design in the twentieth century. He […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
This teapot is an example of Yixing (also spelled YiXing) pottery, from the Yixing region in the Jiangsu province of China. This particular teapot, made of dark teal, unglazed stoneware in the form of a melting candle, won a prize at the International Ceramics Competition in Mino, Japan. It is stamped with a maker’s mark […]
