Celery Green Reassembled Ring Teapot

Celery Green Reassembled Ring Teapot is an early example of my abstract Reassembled Ring Teapots without animal figures attached. I made it soon after Pink Pentagonal-Cross-Section Reassembled Ring Teapot, which was accepted into the “Ceramics Monthly International Competition” in 1999, and is found in the Teapots In Private Collections section of this web site. An artist is always striving to hear echoes back from the wider culture about the work they send out into the world. In this case my photographer friend Jon Barber took slides of various views of this Teapot, and I mailed them to the selection committee of the “Sixth Taiwan Golden Ceramics Awards,” a competition sponsored by a five-story museum in Taipei, Taiwan dedicated solely to ceramic art. Although ceramic art is widely considered a “minor decorative art medium” in the art-powers-institutions of Western culture, it is highly ranked in Asian culture, and five-story museums dedicated to ceramic art are dotted all around Japan, Korea, China and other Asian nations. I wanted my ceramic artwork to be recognized in an Asian country, and maybe that would reverberate back into American culture.

I glazed this Teapot in our electric-kiln oxidation-fired copper green glaze, hoping that it would strike a chord in the Asian judges’ minds, because I knew the color green is very significant in Asian, and especially Chinese culture. First, there is jade green, the “Emperor’s Stone,” a kind of smoky grayish green carveable mineral reserved for the Emperor, or shaped into objects made to honor the Emperor. Then there is celadon green, a French word describing a certain Chinese translucent green glaze colored by a small percentage of iron oxide which was first imported to Europe late in the 1500s. Celadons are fired in a cone 10 reduction kiln, and are also a grayish cool green. At that time starting in the late 1500s when Asian celadon-glazed porcelain was first brought back to the West, the ceramic technicians of Europe could not reproduce it, thus making Asian celadon-glazed ceramics highly prized, celebrated and mysterious.

The copper green glaze that results from an electric kiln firing is much brighter and more toward yellow than jade or celadon green— green is the secondary-color blend of the primary colors blue and yellow. I hoped that this different green would catch the Judges’ eyes, and it did. I also named it “celery green,” knowing that the Teapot’s color is close to this vegetable’s light green, and that the Asian judges would be familiar with the vegetable celery. My Celery Green Reassembled Ring Teapot was accepted into the exhibition, and I heard back an echo of acceptance from a faraway place that had never heard of me or my ceramic art efforts before seeing this piece. Very encouraging, that’s for sure!

Celery Green Reassembled Ring Teapot was chosen for the “Sixth Taiwan Golden Ceramics Awards,” which was on exhibit from November 27, 2000 to February 11, 2001 at the Yingge County Ceramics Museum in Taipei, Taiwan. This exhibition included 151 fired clay artworks selected from over 1200 entries submitted by 759 clay artists from 53 countries around the world. The international jurors for this competition were Janet Mansfield, Sydney, Australia; Tony Franks, Edinburgh, Scotland; Harris Deller, Carbondale, Illinois, USA. Jurors from Taiwan were Yang Winnie, Liou Chen-Chou, and Bob Chen.

From the 151 pieces selected, 18 fired clay artworks were recognized by the jurors with awards. Taiwanese juror Bob Chen honored "Celery Green Reassembled Hollow Ring Functional Teapot" with his "Special Judge's Prize."

In the exhibition catalog Mr. Chen’s remarks were translated as: “About the judges’ award, I had chosen an unselected American functional work: the Teapot of Mr. Ray Bub (Celery Green Reassembled Hollow Ring Functional Teapot). Although the teapot is covered by one piece of green transparent glaze, it reveals the precision of the application of materials and cutting as well as the subtlety of rearrangement.”

Some time later I asked one of my pottery students, a professor Of Chinese Literature at Williams College, to use his knowledge of the Chinese language to translate the comments of Mr. Chen. Here is his translation: “For the Judges’ Award, I have chosen an American work selected [for the competition] “Celery Green Reassembled Hollow Ring Functional Teapot.” Though simply covered by a single layer of transparent green glaze, the work demonstrates a subtlety in the use of materials and in the freshness of the structure and design that is not often seen.”
15” Tall x 11” Wide x 6” Deep
Cone 5 oxidation Firing
This Teapot was purchased for and is held in the permanent collection of the Yingge Ceramic Art Museum, Taipei, Taiwan.