Utah Teapot
Anyone who’s done any OpenGL graphics is familiar with the ubiquitous Utah teapot. It’s been a staple in everything from OpenGL to Pixar movies to countless other shows.
As the story goes, Martin Newell needed a simple mathematical model of a familiar object. His wife suggested modelling their tea set since they were sitting down for tea at the time. He sketched the teapot free-hand using graph paper and a pencil. Following that, he went back to the computer laboratory and edited bézier control points on a Tektronix storage tube, again by hand.
The teapot shape contained a number of elements that made it ideal for the graphics experiments of the time: it was round, contained saddle points, had a genus greater than zero because of the hole in the handle, could project a shadow on itself, and could be displayed accurately without a surface texture.
The good news is that that now you can own your own. The original teapot was made by the German company Friesland. Apparently they were not aware of how famous their teapot had become, but restarted production – even giving it the ‘Utah’ name.
If you want to own your own Friesland Teekanne 1,4l Weiß Utah Teapot – just go to their website and order one today! The original teapot was the white 1.4L model – but other sizes and colors are available.
Update Jan 2024:
A great tragedy. It appears the Friesland factory that made the teapots was destroyed in a major fire.
On June 29, 2023, decades of German porcelain history and tradition were destroyed during a major fire on our company premises. For this reason, we are unfortunately unable to supply you with any of our old series pieces . It was simply: EVERYTHING was destroyed .
However, we are looking forward optimistically and are doing everything we can to build a new factory at the old Varel location . Parts of our popular series Jeverland white, Ecco and La Belle as well as the Walküre series Alta and NYNY are already partially available again.
I sent them an email and there is no eta on when it, or any of their legacy series, will ever come back:
From: Service | Frieslandversand.de
Date: Jan 5, 2024, 12:43 AM
Dear Mr. Fife,
until know we don`t know when this year we are able
to deliver the teapots. Until now we don`t have a production
here after the great fire in June and we are making test at other sites
in Germay fort he production of these articles.
With kind regards
The team of Friesland-Porzellan
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