Tea, Thé, Cha, Tee, Té is universal - and universally appealing. For millennia it has inspired the making of exquisite objets d’art, above all the spouted, steaming engine of hospitality, the teapot.
The Artful Teapot examines the chameleonlike form of the object and how it has become not only an icon but a vehicle for inventive artistic expression. The teapot has drawn widespread attention from the world’s leading designers and artists - called by the French sculptor and installation artist, Arman, one of the key ‘fetish’ objects of our time.
More than 250 teapots are reproduced in colour in this survey, in which the subject’s 500-year history is represented by key works from Yixing (birthplace of the teapot), Meissen, Minton, Wedgwood and other producers, providing the historical background for the book’s main focus: the creations of many of the twentieth-century’s best-known painters, sculptors and ceramists. Garth Clark, provides an analysis of these deeply appealing works that is as provocative, playful and profound as the teapots themselves.
Clark shows us teapots that balance form, surface and function in search of beauty; revolutionary teapots that seek - fascinatingly but fruitlessly - to improve on the most perfect of inventions; teapots inspired by natural forms or made from surprising materials - dollar bills, beads and olive oil cans, among them; and, not least, tea for art’s sake - pots far removed from function, where tea evaporates and imagination replaces the fragrant leaf as content.
Format:
305 x 229 mm, 256 pp., 285 illus., 250 c., hardback
fond special / librărie / colecţie particulară / anticariat /
