Strong Tea:
Richard Notkin and the Yixing Tradition

Artist Bio

Richard T. Notkin was born in 1948 Chicago, and at the time of this exhibition lived in Myrtle Point, Oregon. He has his M.F.A. from the University of California, Davis (1973). He is best known as a ceramist of intricate and political tea pots. In this exhibition his inspiration drew from classic Chinese Pottery, however his tea pots and ceramics have sourced other inspiration.

Exhibition Statement

In the early 1980s, Oregon ceramist Richard Notkin, captivated by the Chinese pottery of the Yixing kilns, transformed images he had been sculpting for over a decade. In response to the rigorous formalism and subdued coloration of Yixing ceramics, particularly the teapots valued by Ming and Qing dynasty literati, Notkin reduced his palette, concentrated on intricate permutations of functional teapot designs, and found a voice particularly suited to his exacting craftsmanship, cerebrality, and reflective, populist politics.

“Chicago Teapot”, 1976, is an example of Notkin’s earlier work. The diminutive scale, the detailing, the composition by accretion of diverse objects, and the choice of images–found objects from a decaying urban culture–recur in the artist’s later Yixing series. However, the colorful surface is exchanged for a beautifully austere stoneware that mimics unglazed Chinese prototypes and exposes each detail of meticulous carving.

Despite all similarities to the Chinese literati, Notkin does not indulge in their nostalgic romanticism. Where their teapots extolled good luck, long life, fertility, and antiquity, Notkin’s express the vagaries of chance, the tentativeness of life, the illusions of social and personal well-being, the conflicts between head and heart, and the impossibility of escape. Notkin suggests that the state of the world is an intimate matter.

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