CC: Well this is just exquisite. It's incredible. It's doll-like, isn't it? I just think it's incredible if this was ever to be used. It's just so delicate, so really quite beautiful. But in relation to the teapot it's quite strange. I can understand this better than I can understand this. I think I was reading about the cup that went with this where she said she boiled it to get rid of the taste of borax or something, but it didn't quite work because there was still a taste in the tea. And I felt that was really interesting, something so delicate having such dangerous effects. Lucie Rie killing people with her dangerous pots.
[video clip starts] That is exquisite. I almost don't want to handle it because it is so delicate. The relation between that space there and this lip, this opening, that decisions of something so delicate and small measurements there, against that quite confident rim. The weight of that and the thickness of that is quite contradictory, almost to the thinness of the rim and the body. But it holds all that weight. [video clip ends] I'm not going to pick it up by just that.
Well, the most interesting bit for me is this bit here, on that accident, or [is it] deliberate but maybe aiming for something accidental as well. It's very curious, it's kind of weighty, its fat body against this proportioned, very carefully proportioned spout. I just think that is quite beautiful. I'm not a great teapot user anyway. I don't know what I would do with it. It's a very beautiful thing to look at. I presume her intention was for them to be used as well.
MP: The story goes, I think, that she was trying to make terra sigillata and used borax, and then the borax made it taste terrible so she was trying to do a particular type of ceramic and used an extra bit of chemical. And then it's useless as a functional object, but she must have brought this from Vienna with her …
CC: Right.
MP: So, I think it's a quite rare, early example.
CC: This was interesting, this very angular form, how it's quite a sculptural form, this big body with the spout and then this handle almost mirroring this shape here. It's very good, [it] has beautiful composition and decisions. I was never much good at teapot projects at college. The possibilities are endless, that's the amazing thing with the teapot - of how to make this relationship between body, spout, lip and handle, and that, I think, does it quite beautifully.
