Curator Alex Tieghi-Walker on Loewe Teapots and Late Nights in Milano

WEDNESDAY 5:05 PM APRIL 9, 2025 MILANO

On Tuesday evening, Loewe hosted a mad tea party during Salone del Mobile, unveiling LOEWE TEAPOTS, a whimsical collection of specially commissioned teapots from a diverse lineup of architects, artists, and designers. On view at Palazzo Citterio, the fantastical installation set the stage for a trip down the rabbit hole with curator and gallerist Alex Tieghi-Walker, where we talked tea, “ooey-gooey” art, and death by Vespa as we explored the playful chaos of Loewe’s wonderland.

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MITCHELL NUGENT: I loved your look. You were brave to wear shorts last night. Were you freezing?

ALEX TIEGHI-WALKER: Yeah, I was freezing. I was pretty cold, especially on my Vespa. My nuts got a bit chilly. But they’re fun shorts, no?

NUGENT: Yeah, they’re fun. I love them.

TIEGHI-WALKER: I got them at Ramdane Touhami’s shop in Paris, which is like the chicest camping store ever, as you know.

NUGENT: Heaven, I need to go there. 

TIEGHI-WALKER: It’s so good. It’s like old carabiner earrings and robe-y jackets. Anyway, teapots. Love teapots.

NUGENT: I love teapots. Do you drink tea?

TIEGHI-WALKER: Yeah, I’m British. I’m a tea-drinker. I even have a whole fucking tea drawer.

NUGENT: What’s your favorite flavor?

TIEGHI-WALKER: I like a licorice tea. I feel like it’s good for the tongue. But honestly, I also just love a classic builder’s tea. Do you know what a builder’s tea is?

NUGENT: No, I know nothing about tea. 

TIEGHI-WALKER: That’s what British people call just basic tea, where it’s the cheap tea bags in hot water with milk and sugar. You just let that tea bag make the water dark. It’s like having three espressos.

NUGENT: Oh, it has a lot of caffeine in it.

TIEGHI-WALKER: So much caffeine, but it’s so fantastic.

NUGENT: Maybe I need to try that.

TIEGHI-WALKER: Yeah. I have teapots at home. I have weird little antique teapots. I have lots of mugs, because collecting mugs is a really fun thing to do.

NUGENT: I always buy mugs on my trips.

TIEGHI-WALKER: Yeah. Mugs and little spoons. I always buy little spoons. But I don’t have any really cool teapots, so I have total teapot envy down here.

NUGENT: I read that your father was a ceramicist. I was wondering if you ever made a teapot with him, or if he made teapots?

TIEGHI-WALKER: No, I don’t think he ever made a teapot, which is honestly a missed opportunity.

NUGENT: I know. That’s like a perfect Christmas gift for anyone.

TIEGHI-WALKER: I’m like, nudge, nudge, hint, hint. Christmas is in eight months. But now that I’m seeing these teapots, I want one of these. I don’t think I can afford any of them, but I want one of these [Loewe teapots]. I actually used to live next door to Peter Shire in L.A., in Echo Park, who is also a mad teapot maker. He makes incredible teapots. What’s cool about seeing all of these teapots down here is that the teapot is such a basic instrument in a way. It’s as old or as simple a vessel as a cup. But the ways in which you can fuck up the system, or the ways you can make these wacky little things, it’s like each one is its own little universe with its own personality.

 

NUGENT: I love the Tommaso Corvi-Mora teapot. It’s the most major one, I think.

TIEGHI-WALKER: Yeah, this one’s kind of unhinged. Honestly, I looked at a lot of these teapots, and was like, “Girl, you are having the time of your life.”

NUGENT: Yeah, they’re a sassy bunch of teapots. Mrs. Potts’ wishes.  

TIEGHI-WALKER: I love that the brief was that the teapots didn’t have to be functional, resulting in like, mayhem ensuing. The presentation itself is so beautiful, the way that you come into that sort of bunker. You’re just looking down on the teapots from above, not really having an idea of what you’re about to be exposed to. Honestly, I spent six minutes looking at each one. A, trying to figure out if I could use it to brew my builder’s tea, and B, if I was to use it, how I would hold it, how I’d store it, how I’d stash it.  Loewe has always been very clever during Salone, because we see so much design with a capital D, that feels very, I like to say it with an Italian accent, “Design.” It’s not that it’s cheesy; there’s a lot of people doing beautiful stuff. But the root of design is craft. And to really platform craft is so fucking smart and always such a delight. The teapots are just another really beautiful execution of that. There are big name designers, like Patricia Urquiola, who I never imagined making a teapot. I can only imagine her lighting and her sofas. So then to see her take on the teapot, which, FYI, I also have no idea if it would be functional or not, but goddamn, I love it.

NUGENT: I know. Heaven.

TIEGHI-WALKER: It’s so good. I mean, That purple, it’s gooey. It makes me want to touch it and squeeze it. But the entire range of teapots that you have here. Madoda is an incredible maker as well. His response to the brief was a little bit more traditional, but still his translation and his language coming through with the vessel and the materials it’s made from is why this presentation is amazing. Each teapot is its own little universe with its own origin story.

NUGENT: I have to figure out the artist but I love the furry one that’s like, a platypus teapot. Then the one that’s a Furby. I’m obsessed.

TIEGHI-WALKER: Those furry ones are so good. I feel like every hangover morning this week in Milan, it would have been very useful to be able to cuddle one of those little furry teapots to see me through the agony.

NUGENT: That’s Björk’s dream teapot.

TIEGHI-WALKER: Yeah, but you know that Björk’s not making tea in that teapot…

NUGENT: I don’t know what she’s doing.

TIEGHI-WALKER: The Jane Yang-D’Haene one, I’m obsessed with her work. At a gallery on Walker Street she was showing these huge, oversized vases. Just the way that she interacts with clay, you really see the touch of her hand in her work. Her teapot looks like she spent a weak pinching coils of clay. It almost looks like coral. I love the one that was enormous, like the giant bucket.

NUGENT: That was so mega.

TIEGHI-WALKER: It was so good. I mean, it just looks like the artist squished a whole bag of clay into an actual bucket and then, somehow, a teapot was tipped out on the other end.

NUGENT: They can do a big builder’s tea in that one.

TIEGHI-WALKER: Yeah, that will caffeinate you for two-and-a-half years. Caffeinate you through the Trump presidency.

NUGENT: You might be needing to add some alcohol to that tea.

TIEGHI-WALKER: A spiked tea. What do you call that, an Irish tea?

NUGENT: I think so.

TIEGHI-WALKER: I like that some of the artists also made cups. I thought that was cool. It really stretched the brief there. You can’t have a teapot without anything to pour the tea into.

NUGENT: It’s fabulous.

TIEGHI-WALKER: I did actually photograph that one by Deng that you shared with me as well.

NUGENT: Oh, fab.

TIEGHI-WALKER: I think she’s like 78, or something insane.

NUGENT: 78 years old and she’s still making her teapots and it’s fabulous.

TIEGHI-WALKER: And with those wild colors. I love her work in general, and her glazes are whack and wild. This one is slime and goo, which is why I loved Misha Kahn’s installation [at Villa Necchi Campiglio] so much. That ooey-gooey art really speaks to me. So obviously, seeing Deng’s melty, slimy teapot was a real joy.

NUGENT: Well, I’ll let you get back to Salone.

TIEGHI-WALKER: I hope I conveyed my feelings on the teapots. I am battling another horrific hangover today, obviously.

NUGENT: On a tear around Milan?

TIEGHI-WALKER: It’s been a real adventure. I keep losing my Vespa. I park it somewhere and I basically have to spend the first 20 minutes of every day walking up and down the rough neighborhood where I knew that I was. And obviously, every scooter looks exactly the fucking same. The only way that you can tell mine apart is because the other day I was driving my friend Rajan, who’s another fabulous gallerist. If you’re ever in London, you should go to his house. I was driving Rajan around and his brand new Margiela long coat got caught in a terrifying Isadora Duncan moment. He was like, “Stop the bike!” It’d been sucked into the wheel. We had no tools to cut it out so I was biting the back of his coat to get it out of the wheel. Now there’s this raggedy bit of fabric hanging off the back of the Vespa, which is the only way I can re-identify it from the others.

NUGENT: I mean, death by Vespa during Salone is kind of chic, no?

TIEGHI-WALKER: Death by Vespa. Can you imagine?