Owning a Mermen of Zennor Teapot

Simon Bayliss’s Screw-cap Teapot (Mermen of Zennor).

I’d written some time ago how I wanted potter and artist Simon Bayliss’s Screw-cap Teapot (Mermen of Zennor). I’d seen it in the Tate St. Ives a few years ago, and every time I went back, there it was, displayed in the Cornish section. I loved it, and it made me happy every time I saw it. I’d say to H how much I’d like one, and she’d say, Contact him, and I’d say, Yeah, right.

However, it came about that we did meet Simon at the private view of his exhibition, It’s Just a Feeling, at the Auction House, a small gallery in Redruth, earlier in the year. This new work was inspired by the drug Ecstasy and rave culture and included typically playful works such as bucket hat bowls, a urinal and a poster comparing pottery marks and ecstasy pill designs*.

I mentioned the teapot to Simon, and he said he had one left (out of ten he’d originally made). We emailed back and forth a few times over the next few weeks, and I decided to buy it. Living nearby, Simon kindly agreed to come and personally deliver the teapot, and we had a very pleasant tea (actually from my Cornishware teapot, not Simon’s) and biscuits in the garden.

*If that’s pretty niche it’s nothing compared to the related event the following day, where Simon Bayliss and cultural and social historian Dr Peder Clark (who first invited Bayliss to develop work on the subject) discussed “the unlikely convergence of Ecstasy and studio pottery”. What made it unique was that it was held in Gwennap Pit, an amphitheatre where John Wesley used to preach, and also where John Peel interviewed Aphex Twin in 1999 for a TV series. The camerawoman for the programme was Senara Wilson, who, 27 years later, joined Bayliss and Clark to discuss Ecstasy and pottery.

Back of the teapot, inspired by a Christopher Wood painting.