Designing teapots has a long tradition in Austria. At the turn of the Twentieth Century Vienna was a center of modern arts and crafts. Using a teapot as a means of formal expression again was therefore an alluring challenge for the Austrian designer Thomas Feichtner.

Designing teapots has a long tradition in Austria. At the turn of the Twentieth Century Vienna was a center of modern arts and crafts. Vienna Silver went with the modern age and is an important part of the history of Austrian design. And the teapot was at the top of Vienna Silver and at the center of the Tea Rooms that were so popular in that era. In those days the design of a teapot was considered to be a major artistic form of expression, even equivalent to painting and architecture from today’s point of view. The variety of shapes did not reflect the styles - the teapot in itself was part of finding a style. Vienna’s highly dynamic move towards the modern age ended abruptly when the First World War broke out, and the same is true for the teapot’s function as a style icon. Using a teapot as a means of formal expression again was therefore an alluring challenge for the Austrian designer Thomas Feichtner. Perfectly aware of this history and terms of an experiment Thomas Feichtner sees his designing of a teapot as a renaissance of an Austrian design tradition that had almost been forgotten.

The design of the Tea Pot does not go back to the tradition of the Vienna Silver. The Pot is a closed, integrative body. Its shape is not vertical and upright but appears rather squat and dynamically stretched. The tapered spout seems to almost make the teapot tip over, but the handle made of Swiss pine provides counterbalance. The sophisticated handle is a continuation of two surfaces and allows perfect one-handed pouring. The tapering spout allows pouring without spilling. The “Viennese Pot“ is defined by edges which have no effect of heaviness but of lively dynamism.

The manufacturer of the teapot “A Viennese Pot“, Wiener Silber Manufaktur, still manufactures teapots based on designs by Josef Hoffmann and Otto Prutscher, two of the greatest designers of the Wiener Werkstätte around 1900. Juxtaposing this tradition with a contemporary design for which the same manufacturing methods were used is extremely inspiring.