Tea Time at SFO New Exhibition Explores Contemporary Teapot Design

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Tea Time at SFO
New Exhibition Explores Contemporary Teapot Design

SAN FRANCISCO -- Contemporary Teapots, a new exhibition at San Francisco International Airport, contains the work of contemporary ceramic artists who have combined a basic form common to everyday life - the teapot - with individual aesthetic and intellectual ideas.

While the teapot form that emerged during the fourteenth- to seventeenth-century Ming dynasty in China still remains the model for today’s functional teapot, many contemporary artists feel that in an industrial age, as makers of handmade pots, they should not compete with industrial production; therefore, they are freed from the necessity to create strictly utilitarian wares. Others believe that the very functionalism of pots is the source of their beauty. Contemporary Teapots includes approximately 60 teapots - whimsical and useful - to reflect these important trends in twentieth-century ceramic art.

The exhibition is divided into five themes: Traditions and Invention, Figuration and Storytelling, Form and/or Function, Glazes and On the Surface. Among the wellknown artists are Clayton Bailey, Jack Earl, John Glick, Richard Notkin, Donald Reitz, Toshiko Takaezu, Akio Takamori, Robert Turner, Beatrice Wood and Betty Woodman.

All objects are part of the Diane and Sandy Besser Collection of contemporary teapots, a recent gift to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The collection is being exhibited at SFO through the San Francisco Airport Museums program in anticipation of the reopening of the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in September 2005.

Contemporary Teapots is located pre-security on the Departures/Ticketing Level of the International Terminal. The exhibition is open to the public, free of charge, twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week through June 2005.

San Francisco Airport Museums

The San Francisco Airport Museums program was established by the Airport Commission in 1980 for the purposes of humanizing the Airport environment, providing visibility for the unique cultural life of San Francisco, and providing educational services for the traveling public. Today, the San Francisco Airport Museums features approximately twenty galleries throughout the Airport terminals displaying a rotating schedule of art, history, science, and cultural exhibitions, as well as the San Francisco Airport Commission Aviation Library and Louis A. Turpen Aviation Museum, a permanent collection dedicated to the history of commercial aviation.

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About San Francisco International Airport

San Francisco International Airport SFO (www.flysfo.com) connects non-stop with more than 60 cities in the United States on 20 domestic airlines, including more than twice as many non-stop flights to the New York area than other Bay Area airports combined. In addition, SFO offers non-stop links with more than 30 international points on 25 international carriers, making SFO the Bay Area’s Airport of Choice.