Handle, Spout and Lid

Contemporary Teapots

From the Collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

The teapot, traditionally a rounded form associated with warmth, confort, and ritual, can become the bearer of aesthetic and intellectual ideas in the hands of a contemporary artist. The teapot form that emerged during the fourteen- to seventeenth-century Ming dynasty in China remains the model for a functional teapot even today. In the early twentieth century, however, Western ceramic artists were influenced by a revolution in art, architecture, and design. Many felt that, in an industrial age, as makers of handmade pots they should not try to compete with industrial production, and therefore they were freed from the necessity to create strictly utilitarian wares. Others felth that the very functionalism of pots was the source of ther beauty. The only agreement seem to center on the teapot itself. Artists and collectors both were attracted to its design challenge.

"I become fascinate," says collector Sandy Besser, "by the idea of how and individual takes the constants of handle, spout, lid and body and treats them." This fascination led to the collection upon which Comtemporary Teapots is based. Whimsical or useful, teapots attracted Diane and Sandy Besser for nearly twenty years. The Besser's collection evolved out of their personal choices, yet many of the important trends in twentieth-century ceramic art are represented. The exhibition is divided into five themes: Tradition and Invention, Figuration and Storytelling, Form and/or Function, Glazes, and On the Surface. Among the well-known artists are Clayton Bailey, Jack Earl, John Glick, Richard Notkin, donald Reitz, Toshiko Takaezu, Akio Takamori, Robert Turner, Beatrice Wood, and Betty Woodman.

Although the Bessers lived in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, for many years, it was time spent in the U.S. Navy in San Francisco during the 1940s that Sandy Besser credits with stimulating his interest in art. "That was the first time I had a desire for art," he says of his visits to the city's galleries, antique stores, and museums. "I wanted to own it." He made his first art purchase, a drawing, in San Francisco.

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