A feature by Paul Makovsky on the Utanalog Teapot in
Metropolis Magazine:
Dries Verbruggen has long been fascinated with an object
that doesn’t actually exist: the Utah teapot. Designed in
1975 by Martin Newell, a computer scientist at the University of
Utah, the digital vessel was the first complex 3-D computer model.
It has since become a standard computer-graphic reference, and
animators often use it as an inside joke. (It popped up in
Pixar’s Toy Story and an episode of The Simpsons, and it even
made its way into an animated video by the Norwegian synthpoppers
Röyksopp.) “It’s kind of like the rock star of the
3-D world,” says the Antwerp-based designer.
A feature by Paul Makovsky on the Utanalog Teapot in
Metropolis Magazine:
Dries Verbruggen has long been fascinated with an object
that doesn’t actually exist: the Utah teapot. Designed in
1975 by Martin Newell, a computer scientist at the University of
Utah, the digital vessel was the first complex 3-D computer model.
It has since become a standard computer-graphic reference, and
animators often use it as an inside joke. (It popped up in
Pixar’s Toy Story and an episode of The Simpsons, and it even
made its way into an animated video by the Norwegian synthpoppers
Röyksopp.) “It’s kind of like the rock star of the
3-D world,” says the Antwerp-based designer.
But only now is the teapot available for your own table.
Verbruggen and his design partner, Claire Warnier, have turned the
computer model into a limited-edition ceramic version called the
Utanalog (a combination of Utah and analog), which debuted last
November in New York at Material ConneXion’s Bits
’n Pieces exhibition. “We had to adjust some things
because the original had no bottom, and we had to add a rim to the
lid— small details like that so that it would actually
function as a teapot,” Verbruggen says. “Otherwise, the
form is an exact copy.”
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