This month I challenged myself to making tea pots, I have only tried once or twice before without much success but when I received an invitation to take part in a tea pot show I decided it was about time I took the pot by the spout as it were and made a serious effort to make some that I liked. I wanted to make them in a sort of art deco, Susie Cooper style with some retro designs, which sort of worked but after discussing them with my friend Rose and realising that the spouts looked quite 'beaky' she suggested that bird designs might be appropriate. I have been looking at the work of Charlie Harper for some time and just love his illustrations, I think they're very clever, especially the way he shows 2 different perspectives in one drawing ( if you look up Charlie Harper in Google make sure you add 'illustrations' otherwise you'll just get lots of pictures of Charlie Sheen...and I really didn't need to see any more of those).
Although I looked at his style for influence and used a similar technique of simplifying and breaking down bird shapes to create patterns I hope they will not be seen in any way as appropriation. I think I'll keep going with them though, and I'm being more disciplined about focusing on fewer designs so I'll probably develop a couple of these and try them in different colour ways and on other forms.
They're going in the Greenhill Galleries Teapot show in April.
