Firmly functional and wickedly whimsical
Burlington gallery kicks off 40th anniversary with tea pot exhibition
If taking tea sounds like something twee, maybe you’ve been using the wrong pot.
Check out Suited to a Tea at the Art Gallery of Burlington. The gallery is kicking off its 40th birthday with an exhibition of 40 extraordinary teapots from its permanent collection.
The gallery, founded in 1978 as the Burlington Cultural Centre, has a collection of contemporary Canadian ceramics comprising more than 2,300 works.
Jonathan Smith, the AGB’s curator of collection, tells me there are 150 teapots.
“The first teapot came into the collection in 1985,” he says.
The exhibition is a great opportunity to see some of the big names in Canadian ceramics. Their tea-bearing vessels come in all shapes and sizes. Some are firmly functional, others wickedly whimsical.
Potters love the challenge of creating a teapot. To qualify as a vessel in which tea is made in and served from, it must have a handle, a lid and a spout. A functional teapot must have a sturdy and roomy handle, a snugly fitted lid and a spout that doesn’t dribble. Handles and lid knobs should fit well into the user’s hands and fingers.
Harlan House’s “Teapot with Rose Finial” is decidedly functional. House is well known for his restrained porcelain and stoneware vessels.
The white pot boasts a big handle and an elegantly tapering spout. The rose knob, or finial, atop the lid adds a quiet decorative note.
For some ceramists, the requirements and restrictions of the teapot represent a different kind of challenge. That is, how far can they stray from the standard shape and still
have an object that can pass for a teapot? With its appendages and removable parts, the teapot cries out for fanciful modifications.
The red and white striped handle on the “Polichinelle Teapot” by Thomas Aitken and Kate Hyde appears to support a figure in white. He sports a tall cylindrical hat. His companion, violin in hand, plays from a sheet of music that just happens to be the knob of the lid.
Polichinelle is the French version of Punchinello or Pulcinella, a character from Commedia dell’arte.
These two figures are hand built in high relief. They are complemented by similar figures — and a dog — painted on the teapot’s belly. The mood of joyful mayhem is typical of many of Hyde and Aitken’s ceramic creations.
Can a pelican be a teapot? Yes, according to Peter Chan’s “Pelican Teapot.”
The pelican eats a fish, the tail end of which sticks out of the bird’s mouth. The mouth is the spout. The top of the pelican’s head morphs into a lid. And a fish clinging to the back of the body serves as a handle.
Sharing the same display case as Chan’s “Pelican Teapot” is the piece de resistance: a teapot by Jeannot Blackburn, a master of the whimsical.
His teapot, “Gilet Rose Noir,” riffs on the human figure. The headless man sports a striped body-hugging vest or gilet.
The teapot’s parts are body parts. The lid lies in the neck and part of the upper chest. A handle can be found in one of the arms.
And the spout? Figure it out.
Regina Haggo, art historian, public speaker, curator and former professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, teaches at the Dundas Valley School of Art. dhaggo@the spec.com Special to The Hamilton Spectator