I love making teapots!
I guess my obsession with making ceramic teapots started during a trip to Greece and Germany in 1986, where I purchased the most beautiful teapot I had ever seen. That teapot travelled with me from country to country for over a year, completely unscathed. It got broken, shattered, at my home here in Millers Flat, Central Otago.
When I discovered I had a flair and talent for working with clay and ceramics, all I wanted to do was recreate that teapot that I bought in Europe. I became obsessed with making teapots and for the last 25 years I have been totally convinced that the next one is going to be the most perfect one. Although, I’m not sure how the perfect one would look, so I just keep on making teapots.
The bodies of my teapots become a canvas for my stories. Things that interest me or confront me become the characters and settings on my pots.
Fortunately, most of my stories are happy stories, and I suspect I am that girl on my pots, maybe the ideal version of me, wearing colourful polka dot dresses. Where I am surrounded by lambs and geese and goats and chickens. I love watching animals do their thing. Recent additions to our family are a couple of baby goats, I find endless joy in watching them roam and bounce around our property, it makes me forget about troubles, I expect everything is just fine and dandy in a spoiled goat’s life.
I travelled much of the world when I was young, but I find these days I rather like being home! We have a lovely cottage which has a grass roof and a lovely open fire, big gardens and lots of fruit trees, lot’s of chickens (and lots of eggs), a creek runs through it where we swim in summer. This and the friends we share it with is my turangaweiwei, this is where I belong now.
On a rare trip to town, I will make sure to stop by my favourite clothing shops to buy more lovely linen dresses for my collection… always bypassing the polka dot ones, because they just don’t look right on me. This is why the girl on the teapot is getting to wear them … lucky her!