The Process of Creating a Sculpture Teapot

A teapot show is a perennial favorite for galleries. What’s not to love? A beautiful form created from the sometimes fanciful imagination of the artist but concealed in the form of a functional vessel, that if you wanted you COULD make tea. I like a design exercise with preset parameters, which forces me to design the form around function. I always love to make these sculptured teapots and they might be the most fun I have in the studio.
The process of making a teapot varies depending on my original concept idea. Some will start off the same way as the wheeled animals do, with me making two pinch pots and joining them together to form a body and then attach legs and head and carve back to finish the form and then model on the details.
Sometimes I make the basic form as a solid piece of clay,  let it harden up some and then cut it in half and scoop out the insides, put it back together and then add and model clay to finish it.
Or they might be coiled, that involves making a hollow form by building up a form from coils of clay.
All of them go through an initial  firing. Then I start decorating  with underglazes, building up layers which involve multiple firings, ending with a luster firing to put on the gold and silver.