I started this Teapot after completing my purple spiny It Is Still (And Yet It Moves) Reassembled Ring Teapot, which can be found in the Teapots For Sale section of this web site. I wanted to continue exploring the technique of mounting the Teapot Assembly up in the air on a supporting rack, so I could make clay additions which wouldn’t be strong enough to support the Teapot’s weight until after the clay was fired.

First I threw a ridged, channeled ovoid cross-section ring, cut through one part of the ring wall, sealed the ends with soft slabs, and immediately lifted the soft clay hollow hose-like circular form off the wheel and coiled it up on a board, supporting it in a spiral shape with sponges and clay props. After drying the closed-form spiral coil to the leatherhard stage, I placed leatherhard clay blocks between the coils and joined the blocks together with clay “ropes” so that it wouldn’t sag when I turned the spiral upright and mounted it on the rack.  I supported the now-upright spiral two inches above a clay slab with 5 leather-hard clay piers of varying heights attached to the slab.  I later added a sixth separate tall leather-hard clay prop to support the top of the Teapot spiral under the cutout lid opening.  The clay props and clay rack had to be made of the same clay body and same water content as the Teapot, so they would all stay the same size relative to each other as they shrank while drying out.

I slab-built and attached the spout, added a pulled handle, and cut out the lid opening, then started to “dress “ the upright spiraling Teapot body.  I tried attaching wavy fins to the teapot channels, but they blocked my view into the spiral’s interior, so I cut them off.  I tried adding flattened curly spines, but I wasn’t satisfied with their look, so I took them off.  Next I tried adding tapering square-cross-section spines, and I liked their look after I twisted them.  I attached a lot of twisty spines of varying lengths, making them generally longer and more spread out toward the bottom of the Teapot and smaller as I moved up the spiral.  I added two long twisted spines as the finial to the Teapot lid, reminiscent of the cartoon character Hagar’s Viking helmet, and added smaller pointy spines to the spout.  I put spines under the handle, but not on the handle itself—I tried some, but they didn’t look right, so I cut them off.

I had built this Teapot with its supporting clay rack on a wooden disc, so after I completed attaching the twisty spines, I carefully slid the drying teapot-rack assembly onto a kiln shelf, and completed the drying process.  I then very carefully lowered the whole assembly into the kiln, breaking off a few spines in the process (I guess I wasn’t careful enough, but the whole kiln shelf-teapot-clay-rack assemblage was very heavy and hard to keep balanced.)  After the biscuit firing, I completely waxed the clay rack so no glaze would stick to it, and waxed the places on the Teapot where the supporting rack piers touched the Teapot spiral. I poured our pale pink glaze all over the Teapot, then painted each twisty spine with dark green at the base, then tangerine and orange, finishing with pale yellow glaze at the tips. After the glaze firing, I was able to lift the Teapot off the rack, although there were several glaze drips.  I ground high points off a few of the lowest spines so that the teapot rests evenly, and looked at what I had created. The Teapot reminded me of the flying water dragon in the Japanese anime classic movie “Spirited Away,” by Hayo Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli, so I named it “Water Dragon Reassembled Ring Teapot.”  I like very much how it spirals up from its spiny feet to its Viking helmet-horned lid finial!

18” Tall x 11” Wide x 9” Deep
Cone 5 oxidation Firing
This Teapot was purchased for a private collection in Aiken, South Carolina.