Exhibition Guide

This tiny double-sided teapot sets anthropomorphic satire firmly on the tea table—a Victorian bastion of ritualized social propriety. Inspired by Patience (1881), a comic Gilbert and Sullivan operetta that pokes fun at the Aesthetic Movement in vogue in 1880s England, the teapot pairs male and female aesthetes as affected as the awkward attitudes struck onstage. Acceptable gender roles blur. Not only is the woman flat-chested, but she also wears a calla lily, a signal of sexual decadence. The limp-wristed man, sporting a large sunflower as his boutonniere, is pointedly effete. The underside of the vessel is inscribed “Fearful consequences through the laws of Natural Selection and Evolution of living up to one’s teapot.” While open to interpretation, the inscription demonstrates how a stylized comedy of aesthetic manners and mannerisms could be lumped together with timely and profoundly vexed issues such as evolution and gender relations.