The story behind Instructor Helen-Blythe Hart's piece “Self Portrait as a Funnel Top Teapot”

The Story behind Instructor Helen Blythe-Hart's piece “Self Portrait as a Funnel Top Teapot” held in collection at Deutches Goldschmeidehaus

HB Paying a visit to her piece in Germany, "Self Portrait as a Funnel Top Teapot"

In March, HB took a pilgrimage to the Deutches Goldschmeidehaus Metalsmithing Museum in Hanau, Germany. The museum purchased HB's piece "Self Portrait as a Funnel Top Teapot" in 2001, during the International Silver Triennial exhibition.

“Self Portrait as a Funnel Top Teapot” is hand fabricated in sterling silver with cast pieces and opal. It’s about 8” tall, and full of symbolic and narrative elements that reflect HB's personal creative process.

"This self portrait represents my artistic process where ideas funnel into me from the sieve-like head and wash into my insides where the art is conceived. The Opal represents looking outward into the universe and the closed eye looking inward. The stuff inside of me is what creates the Art, and then once steeped, pours out over my hands like tea into the world."

Cast silver objects

"Inside is a treadmill with a high heeled shoe and a boot symbolizing the struggle to balance the feminine and toughness necessary to pursue Metalsmithing as a career. There’s an actual moving mousetrap to transmute the things that eat away at a person like the mice eating cheese. A demon, one dimensional as it is,

represents something everyone struggles with at times. "

Reclaimed red glass heart

"The Twin Towers, pyramid, Chrysler Building and Jetsons style space needle show my love for architecture as an inspiration. There’s also a waft of Argyle swirling through which represents my philosophy of the cyclical nature of art and creativity. The glass heart came from a set of beautiful red glasses my mother once gave me. During her losing battle with cancer, one of the glasses broke. I took the pieces of the broken glass and melted them back together to represent me putting the pieces of my broken heart back together to make something beautiful emerge from the pain. "

The Deutches Goldschmeidehaus purchased the piece during the International Silver Triennial exhibition in 2001 shortly after the tragedy of 911.

HB recalls this period – "I could see the smoke billowing from the burning towers from my back yard. That experience affected me deeply. It was an honor for me to have this very personal piece purchased early in my career by a place that would display it for so many to enjoy."

---

Deutsches Goldschmiedehaus in Hanau is one of Germany’s most important museums devoted to contemporary jewelry, silversmithing, and metal arts. Housed in a reconstructed

Renaissance timber-frame building, it has been a major exhibition center for gold- and silversmithing since 1942, with strong ties to Hanau’s historic jewelry-making tradition and the Staatliche Zeichenakademie. Its influence extends internationally through exhibitions on studio jewelry, hollowware, conceptual adornment, and experimental metalwork. HB's piece "Self Portrait as a Funnel Top Teapot" is held in their permanent collection.

Current exhibitions open to the public include “Spuren legen. Mit Materialität erzählen” (through Oct. 18, 2026), the Friedrich Becker Prize 2026 exhibition, and “Aus dem Depot. Eine Bestandsaufnahme,” a survey of postwar jewelry and metal arts from the museum collection.