Here's a sweet little stoneware teapot that I purchased from Michael Cardew on a visit to his studio around 30 years ago give or take a year or two.
Today is another cooking day. For some reason, I arranged my recipe selection to require two days of intense peeling, chopping, slicing and cooking. Yesterday's beef stew took over 6 hrs (the recipe said 1 1/2 hrs), to cook. That must have been the oldest steer in North America; but the new recipe with Porters's beer was wonderful. Thank goodness I started the recipe before noon! Needless to stay, having to hang around the kitchen stirring every 15 minutes for 7 hours kept me out of the studio!
On the menu today is a Tuscan vegetarian stew with cannellini beans, porcini mushrooms, tomatoes, carrots, onion and a lot of chopped kale, 8 cloves of garlic, and vegetable broth,which looks healthy but I'm not sure of the smoky flavor from the porcini mushrooms. I've added a lot more herbs than it called for to give more depth of flavor. Maybe the post cooking sprinkling of parmesan cheese will help.I hope we like it enough to save the leftovers since there's a lot of it! In any case, to help it out the texture of the meal I'll make some garlic bread to go with it.
After lunch I'll be able to get in my studio time. Mugs need handles and some bowls need slipping and decorating.
Till later,
June
Hi June. Nice teapot. Where do you buy cannelini beans!!! I've been looking. Have fun in the studio!
ReplyDeleteHi June, nice Teapot ! Does it pour well with that spout, my pottery eye thinks not, but I'm not going to be one to critic a Michael Cardew pot far from it.
ReplyDeleteI only ask because I always test my Spouts to see if they Dribble and I tell customers if they are good or bad. I don't see the point in selling a pot to someone who is not happy with it once they get it home, I'd rather they bought something else that they will be happy with. even if they decide not to buy anything from me at least I can sleep at night.
Michael, I got them canned at Earth Fare. I couldn't find them in any form locally.
ReplyDeleteI should have checked to see if they had them in dry form, but when I found them canned, I just went with that since I knew it would shorten the prep time for my recipe greatly!
As far as the teapot, I've never checked it for pouring. I'm not fussy about teapots dribbling. Wine makers don't care if their $100 + bottles of wine dribble a bit, so I don't care much at the a drop of tea sliding off the spout. With that sharp edge, I think that it probably wouldn't drip.
June
I printed out this teapot to bring to class because we were doing teapots and loved the form. Just curious if this teapot has Cardew's seal on it. My teacher (who worked with Michael Cardew - Cardew wanted him as his apprentice) swears it's not Michael Cardew's but looks exactly like Mike Dodd's (who also worked along w/Cardew at one point).
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DeleteYour teacher is probably right. There's no mark on the pot, and Michael wrote out my sales slip but didn't write any names on the three pots I bought that day, which was some time in the 80's, if memory serves me. It was soon after Leach and Hamada had passed away and I wanted to make sure I got to meet Michael who was in a sense, a part of that wonderful three some of potters.
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