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Tea with a twist
Photos A new take on the humble teapot.
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August 19, 2008
Exquisite side-handled teapots are the singular forte of one Australian ceramic artist - Mosman potter Malcolm Greenwood.
"Nobody else I know is doing it," says Greenwood, who has spent three decades perfecting his art. "It's a traditional Japanese design and I've always been interested in Japanese ceramics."
Greenwood draws inspiration from the ancient world for his innovation. He uses a delicate Japanese bamboo implement, known as a tombo or dragonfly, to measure the lid and the inside of the pot. The rest, he says, is experience.
"I've made different shapes over the years but I keep coming back to this," says Greenwood, who also makes square, rectangular, oval and triangular teapots with cane handles. "My teapots vary a little in design but they are all roughly the same. I throw the body, the lid and the spout. I put the lid on, attach it to the body and then cut it."
Greenwood grew up in a family of tea drinkers and discovered the soothing habit when he was five or six years old. Despite his perfectionist approach to design, he does not believe his pots make a better cup of tea.
"It's not better, it's just different," he said.
Journal of Australian Ceramics editor Vicky Grima disagrees. She believes Greenwood's teapots are the best in the country.
"Looking at them again now, they really are very good," she says. "You look at the angle of the spout and the shape of the pot itself...they work and they are designed to be used."
Grima says the recent trend has been for ceramics artists to stray into form rather than function. Local artists face intense competition at both ends of the spectrum - from high-end international manufacturers such as Wedgewood to mass-produced ceramic kitchenware. And so they lean towards the off-beat and the art market.
"Not a lot of people are making functional teapots," she says. "Malcolm Greenwood is one who is. They are extremely functional because he's a very competent potter. He looks at the handle and the way people pour."
Greenwood was completing a Masters in Business Administration in the US when he began making pottery on the side. He studied with a visiting Japanese potter, Makoto Yabe, learning throwing, glaze formulation and firing techniques. His business interests eventually took him around the world - including to Asia and Africa where he began collecting pottery and studying the traditional art form.
In 1980, he returned home to Australia but his pottery remained a hobby. Then, in 1989 he left the corporate world to work full-time with clay. He has never looked back.
Now 56, Greenwood's work is held in private collections across Australia as well as in the USA, Japan, Korea, Canada, Singapore and Thailand. His work has been exhibited in Japan and he has sold teapots to the prestigious Asian department store Lane Crawford - better known as the Harrods of Hong Kong.
It's the claymakers' equivalent of selling tea to China. But ironically when the Sydney Teapot Show opened in the Clayworks Gallery in Glebe this month as part of Sydney Design 08 - Greenwood was a notable omission.
"They go for really funky, way-out things," he says. "My teapots are made for people who are serious about drinking tea."