Creatives put their unique spin on the ubiquitous vessel at Loewe Teapots during Milan Design Week 2025

During this year’s Salone del Mobile, held from Apr 8 to Apr 13, Spanish luxury house Loewe tasked 25 internationally renowned artists, designers and architects to present their creative take on the humble teapot. These creations were highlighted within Palazzo Citterio in Milan where the global furniture and design fair has been held since 1961.

This is the ninth time the Loewe took part in the furniture and design fair, expanding their generations of design and craft expertise into typologies beyond fashion. Previous editions have focused on techniques like weaving and basketry.

The participants are some of the most esteemed in their disciplines; some are also Loewe Foundation Craft Prize luminaries. This experiment brings to the fore not just the multifaceted cultural approaches to tea drinking through the ages, but also the depth and breath of the vessel’s craft lineage with regard to form, material and glazing techniques.

These teapots are not for sale but at the event, visitors could purchase a selection of tea-related homewares produced by Loewe for the Salone, such as teapots made by Spanish artisans using Galician clay, a special edition Earl Grey tea candle specially created for Milan Design Week. Here, we highlight 10 teapots in the exhibition that elicit curiosity, fascination and admiration.

DENG XI PING

Veteran ceramicist Deng Xi Ping was formerly featured in a film for Loewe’s 2022 Colours of Nature collection, which was inspired by Chinese monochrome ceramics. Her Immortal Teapot was named after the properties of the agate glaze. When fired in a high-temperature kiln, the glaze produces surprising patterns and colours that never fade or lose their shine. The teapot’s tree stump-like shape represents endless life and eternity.

JANE YANG-D’HAENE

Born in South Korea, Jane Yang-D’Haene moved to New York City to attend the Cooper Hewitt School of Architecture and later became an interior designer. Her stoneware pieces draw from her Korean heritage but their expressions are utterly singular, with graffiti-like illustrations that embody a irreverence and rawness. Her teapot has an ultra-feminine quality, wrapped with ribbons of clay like a dress.

MINSUK CHO

The founder of Korean architecture firm Mass Studies has streamlined the various components of the teapot into a singular form. Its twin contrasting textures – a smooth, flat surface versus a sculptural, handmade body – enhances a sense of tactility. The flat surface also has an added functionality – it can also hold teacups and tools for preparing tea. Cho worked with Korean ceramic artist Minwoo Chae to realise the design.

PATRICIA URQUIOLA

The celebrated Spanish designer and architect collaborated with ceramics manufacturer Bitossi to create her teapot, Ardilla (Spanish for squirrel). Urquiola’s abstract version has the handle, body and spout clearly expressed but with whimsical proportions and shapes that evokes its namesake critter. A lilac gradient injects playfulness – a trait commonly found in Urquiola’s designs.

TAKAYUKI SAKIYAMA

Born in 1958 in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, Takayuki Sakiyama’s fluid creations give them a distinct sensuality, as if they are frozen in mid-motion. They embody the personality of the sea and waves, which is a consistent source of inspiration. Likewise, Sakiyama’s teapot has the different parts of a teapot contained in one elegant swirling stroke.

SUNA FUIJTA

Suna Fujita is a ceramic studio run by husband-and-wife pair Shohei Fujita and Chisato Yamano. In 2023, the studio collaborated with Loewe for an entire collection dedicated to their work. Currently based in Kyoto prefecture, Japan, they create pieces for the everyday, using playful motifs of animals and plants, fragments of imagined landscapes and memories. Their bird-like teapot continues this childlike expression.

WANG SHU

Pritzker Prize-winner and architect Wang Shu founded Amateur Architecture Studio in 1997 in Hangzhou, China with his wife, Lu Wenyu. One of the country’s most progressive and respected firms, its works often reuses materials from old structures in novel ways. His teapot, named Huan Cui (‘Surrounding green’ in Chinese), integrates the handle and spout into a monolithic structure.

MADODA FANI

South African artist Madoda Fani is a finalist of the Craft Prize 2022. His expertise is in hand-coiled, burnished and smoke-fired pieces that bring traditional Nguni ceramics into the modern milieu. Fani studied graphic design but learnt techniques from some of South Africa’s leading clay masters; a member of the renowned Nala family of Zulu beer-pot makers also taught him to burnish clay with stone. The intricate, repetitive patterns common of his creations are found on his teapot whose surface has been left unglazed.

DAVID CHIPPERFIELD

Another Pritzker Prize laureate, David Chipperfield’s teapot is as refined and rational as his architecture. Made in collaboration with Galician ceramic artist Paula Ojea of Ojea Studio and jeweller Noroeste Obradoiro, its handsome cobalt glaze is matched with a thin copper handle. Rather than abstraction and whimsy, he leaned toward legibility.

ROSE WYLIE

Juergen Teller recently photographed Rose Wylie for Loewe’s Spring Summer 2025 pre-collection campaign. Her teapot was inspired by British Royal Albert china tea sets, which are identified with beautiful floral prints, soft pastel shades and refined gold gilding. But the British painter has made it her own with an exaggerated lid and fluted details.