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Oh, I am out of jasmine. I'll just pop over to China to get some.”
The teapot is painted with two worlds: one side depicts South Carolina, with palmetto trees, sandhill cranes, and a river; the other evokes China, with its distinctive landscape and architecture.
I imagined THE TEAPOT VEHICLE: what if that visual journey were real? What if the teapot could actually take you there? That became the story of a free Black woman in colonial South Carolina who, upon discovering she’s out of jasmine for her tea, simply pops over to China to get some.
I used John Bartlam’s Teapot as my creative brief. I was struck by The Met’s description of the teapot as almost like walking around a globe: one side places you in South Carolina, while the other suddenly places you in China.
In my imagined world, walking around the teapot is the journey. She places it on the floor, walks around it, and as she reaches the other side, she finds herself in the Chinese landscape depicted on the teapot.
I explored the idea as a sequence of still images in FLORA, building the character, her world, and the journey around Bartlam’s original teapot.
"Some journeys fit in a teapot."
Original Met Artwork: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/777786
Artwork Description
John Bartlam’s Teapot, made around 1765–69 in Cain Hoy, South Carolina, is a soft-paste porcelain vessel decorated in underglaze blue. Its imagery brings together South Carolina landscape motifs, including palmetto trees and sandhill cranes, with imagery associated with China.
The Met describes the experience of walking around the teapot as being almost like walking around a globe—moving from South Carolina to China. This became the central visual idea behind THE TEAPOT VEHICLE.
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