Skip to Content
Today Open today 11–8

Teapot

A work made of glazed and enameled parian ware.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

Image actions

  • A work made of glazed and enameled parian ware.

Date:

1882

Artist:

Designed by James Hadley
English, 1837–1903
Made by the Royal Worcester Porcelain Company
Worcester, England, reorganized 1862

About this artwork

Made by James Hadley, the preeminent modeler at the Royal Worcester Porcelain Factory, this teapot references the Aesthetic Movement that was fashionable in the late 19th century. The teapot partly capitalized on the success of W. S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan’s operetta Patience, a satire of the Aesthetic Movement that was first performed in 1881, the year the vessel was produced. Patience prominently featured a poet called Bunthorne, a caricature of writer and aesthete Oscar Wilde. Like Wilde, disciples of the Aesthetic Movement had specific ideas about the most beautiful flowers (sunflowers and calla lilies) and colors (purple), and they subscribed to the notion that by surrounding oneself with beautiful objects one would become beautiful.On the base of the teapot appear the words Fearful Consequences Through the Laws of Natural Selection & Evolution of Living up to One’s Teapot—an allusion to something Oscar Wilde said while he was a student at Oxford University in England: “I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.” The teapot’s base is a double-edged satire, mocking Wilde’s overwrought attention to all things aesthetic, as well as Darwin’s newly introduced theory of natural selection, which was scoffed at for its implication that humans descended from apes. Taking Wilde’s quip to its logical conclusion, the young man and woman on the teapot have so successfully lived up to their china that they have literally morphed into a teapot.

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Applied Arts of Europe

Artist

Worcester Porcelain Factory (Manufacturer)

Title

Teapot

Place

England (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

1882

Medium

Glazed and enameled Parian ware

Dimensions

15.6 × 17.2 × 8.6 cm (6 1/8 × 6 3/4 × 3 3/8 in.)

Credit Line

Eloise W. Martin Acquisition Fund; purchased with funds provided by Maureen Savaiano, Jamie Maloney, Mr. and Mrs. James Knox, and Mr. and Mrs. Terry Perucca

Reference Number

2010.273

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.

https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/202468/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

Share

Sign up for our enewsletter to receive updates.

Learn more

Image actions

Share