Harris Deller

American, b. 1947

Teapot
1991

Stoneware
12 x 12 x 3.5 in.
Gift of the Nora Eccles Treadwell Foundation
1993.26

Is Harris Deller’s Teapot a vessel or a canvas? Here he combines basic shapes—a cylinder, a triangle—with two coiled tubes resembling a spout and handle. Though the title encourages the viewer to understand the combined flattened shapes as a ceramic object used to serve tea and coffee, Deller turns to abstraction to reconsider the role of volume in such an object. By squeezing the volume out, he has transformed the nature of the vessel form. The abstracted teapot embraces a two-dimensional plane for mark making through incised lines that are scratched with black glaze, providing a graphic quality.

Harris Deller was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1947. He received his BA from California State University, Northridge, and went on to complete his MFA degree at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he graduated in 1973. Deller taught in the ceramics program at Southern Illinois University, an influential craft school in Carbondale, Illinois, from 1975 to 2013

Matthew Limb

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This object has the following keywords:

• geometric
• hatching - Shading or modeling with fine, closely laid parallel lines.
• teapot

This object was included in the following exhibitions:

• Ceramics Case 4: Just Teapots , 1/9/2012 - 7/20/2012
• Ceramic Case 2: Just Teapots , 8/17/2012 - 5/5/2014
• Champ Hall Ceramics , 2/7/2017 - 1/28/2022
• Form vs. Function: Teapots from the NEHMA Collection , 2/9/2017 - 12/14/2018
• Unearthed , 8/23/2022 - 5/14/2023

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