The British version of a steamer teapot, maybe?
Trying to understand the concept of a "toast rack" took me a bit of time, at least.Lost-in-translation teapot designs?
Maybe a lost in translation design, this pot references the traditional magic-tricks performed by entertainers. The spout is a magic wand, the body is a tophat with a stylized rabbit inside for the lid, with the handle made of knotted silks (pulling various things out of a seemingly empty old-fashioned hat is a classic routine), and displayed on front is the Queen of Hearts, here representing the various card-tricks.
Why someone would choose a magic-tricks teapot is a bit of a mystery to me, though. Maybe to let everyone know that this will be an unusual tea-time, so to prepare to be surprised?
Why someone would choose a magic-tricks teapot is a bit of a mystery to me, though. Maybe to let everyone know that this will be an unusual tea-time, so to prepare to be surprised?
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However, just because the ingredients are there does not mean that the meaning is consistently the same. For instance, this teapot has playing cards, a man in a top hat, and what seems to be a rabbit, and while one could argue that the man in the tophat is indeed an entertainer, he is not a magician, but instead the fantasy character The Mad Hatter from the 19th century story of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The various parts are references to scenes from the story, such as the tea party with the March Hare and the encounters with the King of Hearts.
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Do you happen to know the artist? My suspicion is that the lost-in-translation is related to their country's relationship to industrialization. In the U.S., for instance, well-made functional items are assumed to be machine-made, so in order to highlight that something is made by hand, artists often take an active effort to make an item look cruder or less functional. Although they arrived at it by different paths than Japan, this is also why Americans tend to find "wabi sabi" appealing, I think.
I wonder sometimes if this is also related to few Americans actually working in factories anymore, as any factory worker will be happy to point out the limits of mass-production when it comes to cost-effective machining. Past a certain point there can be only artists, because the cost-to-benefit is no longer there.
I took that pic at the renwick museum a few years ago. The artist:mbanu wrote: ↑Sun May 23, 2021 9:31 amDo you happen to know the artist? My suspicion is that the lost-in-translation is related to their country's relationship to industrialization. In the U.S., for instance, well-made functional items are assumed to be machine-made, so in order to highlight that something is made by hand, artists often take an active effort to make an item look cruder or less functional. Although they arrived at it by different paths than Japan, this is also why Americans tend to find "wabi sabi" appealing, I think.
I wonder sometimes if this is also related to few Americans actually working in factories anymore, as any factory worker will be happy to point out the limits of mass-production when it comes to cost-effective machining. Past a certain point there can be only artists, because the cost-to-benefit is no longer there.
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The more you tighten your standards, the more pots will be categorized as defects. This raises the cost. Generally as you approach the high end, the deviations become smaller and smaller while the cost to correct them remains the same. Eventually it reaches a point where the typical person is not willing to pay significantly more for only minor improvements. At that point, the pot has reached its functional price. People who are willing to continue paying usually are not paying because they need their pot to be perfect because of how they make their tea, but because they along with the maker are chasing the aesthetics of perfection, or there is something else going on that is not being properly addressed, such as the teapot turning into a Veblen good.
As an example, the potter Zhao Jinghua described his mentor Gu Jingzhou as making pots so perfect they looked as if they had been made with a machine. When the interviewer Geoffrey Gowland was told this, he was struck by the difference in perspective, as in many countries that would have been considered an insulting comparison. However, in this case it was the highest form of praise, saying that Gu Jingzhou was so skilled that he broke the barriers of what it was thought possible a human being could do, like a record-breaking athlete.
Not selling products that fail to meet release specifications, I thought, mainly occurs for regulated products where specifications are set to meet regulations. In those cases, only the critical specifications that have to do with safety or effectiveness (in the case of drugs) are set and the ranges made as broad as possible to minimize production costs while at the same time to minimize any risk of being forced to do a recall.mbanu wrote: ↑Mon May 24, 2021 1:26 amThe more you tighten your standards, the more pots will be categorized as defects. This raises the cost. Generally as you approach the high end, the deviations become smaller and smaller while the cost to correct them remains the same. Eventually it reaches a point where the typical person is not willing to pay significantly more for only minor improvements. At that point, the pot has reached its functional price. People who are willing to continue paying usually are not paying because they need their pot to be perfect because of how they make their tea, but because they along with the maker are chasing the aesthetics of perfection, or there is something else going on that is not being properly addressed, such as the teapot turning into a Veblen good.
As an example, the potter Zhao Jinghua described his mentor Gu Jingzhou as making pots so perfect they looked as if they had been made with a machine. When the interviewer Geoffrey Gowland was told this, he was struck by the difference in perspective, as in many countries that would have been considered an insulting comparison. However, in this case it was the highest form of praise, saying that Gu Jingzhou was so skilled that he broke the barriers of what it was thought possible a human being could do, like a record-breaking athlete.
As for less regulated products, wouldn't the choice of not selling a product that fails specifications be purely a business decision based in large part on market forces such as demand and competition but not on some internal manufacturer dictate that if spec failed then discard? I imagine there could even be different ranges of the spec that are linked to pricing - as occurs during tea leaf sorting and grading.
A teapot video became popular on social media recently because it showed off a teapot that was splashless even at a decent height. Well, how much would someone pay for that? At first glance, a splashless teapot would be desirable when performing gongfu brewing with an expensive tea because it would minimize waste. However, there is also the alternative of just pouring your pot into a fairness pitcher. So it sort of mirrors the old joke of the two space agencies trying to develop a pen to use in outer space and one creates an expensive new pen while the other decides to just use a pencil.
If a second company came out and said, "Ah, well, our teapot is not only splashless, but splashless from a very great height!" that might be appealing, but not for functional reasons because nobody makes tea that way. It certainly would not seem like a good value compared to using a fairness pitcher or even the ordinary splashless pot. If a third company then came out and said, "We spent thousands of hours, and after many rejected pots, have made a pot that is splashless at a height greater than any other teapot!" Well, OK, it has the world record for over-solving an already solved problem. People may find that appealing, but not for functional reasons. And what would happen to their rejected pots, which over-solve the solved problem for more money than a fairness pitcher and don't have the story-value of the record-holding pot?
Sometimes things can get jumbled together when people buy things that solve legitimate problems that they themselves don't have, like the person who buys a diving watch to use in the swimming pool. Watches are maybe a good mirror here, as people will pay large sums of money for mechanical watches that are less accurate than quartz, or will insist on levels of accuracy that have no purpose in their day-to-day lives, even if conceivably someone could have a purpose for such an accurate watch. Over-engineering thus turns into an art-form, as people chase the record-breaker even after the problem that it was supposedly designed to solve has long since been solved.
Over-engineering as art is contrasted against the competing idea that engineering and art are fighting to occupy the same space, and that one loses out as the other dominates. Under that perspective, the more engineering involved, the less artistic it can be. So if you are trying to create high-art, the goal is to expel as much engineering from the item as possible. This is one reason why in that world's art pecking order, paintings of things are considered more artistic than photographs of things, and abstract paintings of things are considered more artistic than realistic paintings of things.
So a melted teapot would in turn be more artistic than a non-melted teapot, even as the standard pot-user asks, "So how would I even make tea in this?"
If a second company came out and said, "Ah, well, our teapot is not only splashless, but splashless from a very great height!" that might be appealing, but not for functional reasons because nobody makes tea that way. It certainly would not seem like a good value compared to using a fairness pitcher or even the ordinary splashless pot. If a third company then came out and said, "We spent thousands of hours, and after many rejected pots, have made a pot that is splashless at a height greater than any other teapot!" Well, OK, it has the world record for over-solving an already solved problem. People may find that appealing, but not for functional reasons. And what would happen to their rejected pots, which over-solve the solved problem for more money than a fairness pitcher and don't have the story-value of the record-holding pot?
Sometimes things can get jumbled together when people buy things that solve legitimate problems that they themselves don't have, like the person who buys a diving watch to use in the swimming pool. Watches are maybe a good mirror here, as people will pay large sums of money for mechanical watches that are less accurate than quartz, or will insist on levels of accuracy that have no purpose in their day-to-day lives, even if conceivably someone could have a purpose for such an accurate watch. Over-engineering thus turns into an art-form, as people chase the record-breaker even after the problem that it was supposedly designed to solve has long since been solved.
Over-engineering as art is contrasted against the competing idea that engineering and art are fighting to occupy the same space, and that one loses out as the other dominates. Under that perspective, the more engineering involved, the less artistic it can be. So if you are trying to create high-art, the goal is to expel as much engineering from the item as possible. This is one reason why in that world's art pecking order, paintings of things are considered more artistic than photographs of things, and abstract paintings of things are considered more artistic than realistic paintings of things.
So a melted teapot would in turn be more artistic than a non-melted teapot, even as the standard pot-user asks, "So how would I even make tea in this?"
One category that stumps me is "cottage pots". This is a popular British teapot design, but as far as I can tell these are neither famous landmarks nor the homes of friends of the owners of the teapots. Is there something in the architecture of the cottages that has a meaning for those in the know?
Or maybe these are an export item exclusively? I know that in the U.S., "cottage life" used to be shorthand for a certain kind of tea-aesthetic popularized by some of the curly-script magazines (the modern "cottagecore" revival hasn't quite found tea just yet), but I had assumed it was just the term that was shorthand, not having an actual cottage-shaped teapot.
Or maybe these are an export item exclusively? I know that in the U.S., "cottage life" used to be shorthand for a certain kind of tea-aesthetic popularized by some of the curly-script magazines (the modern "cottagecore" revival hasn't quite found tea just yet), but I had assumed it was just the term that was shorthand, not having an actual cottage-shaped teapot.
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