As a child, my grandmother would take out her tea cup collection for use at family dinners.  No two were the same, and we would get to choose which cup to use.  I remember feeling very grown up to be trusted with something so beautiful and delicate .  My first forays into glass were bowls and bottles, but I was always thinking back to those tea cups.  I'd been taught that you should always try to make the ordinary extraordinary.  Form, line, color, and pattern are all very important to me.   The way those things come together in a tea cup or teapot is really quite extraordinary.  I am now the steward of my Nana's cups, as well as my own small collection of teapots.

It took some years before I would attempt a teapot because I wanted my skills to be up to the challenge.  Handles and spouts are integral to the fluidity  of a teapot, and tricky when formed from pattern.  It's a form I'm always happy to return to again and again.  Teapots are very figurative, much more so then the cup.  They lend themselves to gesture, austerity, whimsey, and narrative.  A good many of us can relate to being short and stout.  Tea confers comfort and a sense of home and security, themes that recur again and again in my work.