Golden Tips Tea

Perhaps as a reaction of the mass bloodletting that occurred, was an exercise in fantasy design. Beginning in the 1820's with Rococo, novelty was valued over taste and style. Every major trend in Victorian art and craft styles was reflected including:

Renaissance
Gothic
Chinese
Moorish
Arts and Crafts Movement (per William Morris)
Japanese Arts (heavily influenced by the 1862 Japanese Exhibit)
Art Nouveau (massive floral forms)

Indeed, such influences were strong enough to prompt a cartoon in the English magazine, Punch, to show a couple in the late 1880's admiring their new teapot, designed "a la Japanese", and remarking that they must truly struggle to make their lives "worthy of such pure design". The cartoon is additionally humorous because of the fact that if anything was NOT present in teapot designs during the Victorian period,it was "pure design".

20th Century Design

It may be human nature to react negatively against such a flood of embellishment. Designs at the beginning of the twentieth century returned to simpler forms. By the 1920's teapots were designed to be "functional", within the tradition of the architect and designer Corbusier, a major influence. Among the most notable of the teapots designed by this school were the "cube teapots", which were, as the name suggests, square.

The 1930's saw the advent of the Art Deco Movement. The machine was seen as an art object with teapots being designed during this period as race cars, railroad engines, airplanes, and even tanks. Few teapots were produced during World War II due to the absorption of all non-vital production into war efforts.

Teapots during the 1960's were functional, reflecting the current trend of "modernism". By the 1970's novelty teapots reappeared, this time as a variety of animals and even as space capsules. During the 1980's, an elegance returned to the design of teapots, with many classic patterns from the 1700's and early 1800's being reproduced.