Item of the Month

Dreamy Dancer Teapot, from the Smile Tea Teapot line by Adrien Miller

Steep your morning tea in dreams with this beautiful, peaceful sculptural teapot, handmade for you by Seattle artist Adrien Miller.

This one-of-a-kind stoneware teapot was wheel-thrown and hand-sculpted into the calm, smiling face of a woman as she drifts into a dream of dance. The two smaller figures on the back depict a beautiful woman dancing, her arms flying over her head and her leg trailing behind her in an arabesque, and another woman halfway through a backflip, floating weightless and upside down. Adrien Miller hand-sculpted, then press molded these tiny figures, which also appear in Adrien's other works. He attached them to the teapot a few days after he threw and sculpted the teapot, when the clay was still slightly wet.

After an initial bisque firing to set the clay, Adrien poured shiny white glaze on the inside, swirled it around, and poured it out. He then poured matte white glaze over the outside of the pot, and fired it to 2230 degrees, or cone 6. At this heat, the glaze melts into the surface of the clay, making a smooth, vitreous surface and a durable, easy-to-clean piece of stoneware that you will treasure for years.

The Dreamy Dancer Teapot features a smooth, round Japanese style handle so that you can pour your steaming hot tea with a turn of the wrist, as if you were turning a doorknob. The teapot stands approximately 6 inches tall and 10 inches wide including the handle.

The spout opens into the body of the pot with no internal strainer, so it's great for steeping bags of tea. If you like loose leaf tea, it would be best to use this pot with an in-pot strainer, or pour your tea through a strainer into your cup.

This teapot is an absolutely one of a kind work of art. Like most of Adrien's work, the Dreamy Dancer Teapot is made of recycled stoneware, the clay being reclaimed from the discard bucket at a community ceramics studio.

As a visual artist, Adrien Miller values beauty that generates a sense of well-being. Work like the Dreamy Dancer teapot arises from the marriage of his love for sculpting the human form with his love for making things that feel good to use. If you like drinking tea from handmade wares, you'll love the feeling of this sculpted teapot in your hand. Adrien's artful and intentional craft of this piece will deepen and enhance your morning, afternoon or evening tea.

Adrien focuses on faces and bodies because they clearly express and reflect a specific state of being. It is his main intention to bring calm, happiness, joy, and peace into your life through his work, and these are the expressions and the energy that clearly radiate from his artwork.

Adrien is a working artist, and he holds a BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts with an individualized major in sculpture, painting, and photography. He shows his painting, photography and sculpture in local Puget Sound galleries, and he finds these functional art ceramic pieces to be an exciting venture in merging the affordable with the transcendent, the functional with the artistic. Your registry with Adrien at Sound Trading Company helps support an independent artist's career.

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