"Mexican Bauhaus Can Opener"
The title of this teapot is an indication of Shire’s debt to the work of the Bauhaus designers a half century earlier. The teapot also draws on the angular, futuristic vernacular architecture of midcentury Los Angeles, where Shire was born and raised. He views his work as a challenge to the rigidity of the modernist vocabulary and seeks to create a visual dialogue between forms and surfaces, technology and aesthetics.
Artwork Details
- Title: "Mexican Bauhaus Can Opener"
- Designer: Peter Shire (American, born Los Angeles, 1947)
- Date: 1981
- Medium: Glazed ceramic
- Dimensions: 8 3/8 × 14 × 7 3/4 in., 4.2 lb. (21.3 × 35.6 × 19.7 cm, 1.9 kg)
- Classification: Ceramics-Pottery
- Credit Line: Gift of Henry and Barbara Neugass Shire, 2001
- Object Number: 2001.691.1
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art
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Peter Shire
1981
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