My visit to the West country last week was much like the typical curate's egg: good in parts.
Stayed in a couple of nice hotels, spent some time alone, reading, some time sightseeing, some time eating and drinking and chatting with friends and one's significant other. The great bit was the perfect weather when we visited Coleton Fishacre, a beautiful Art Deco house with stunning gardens. We walked down the steep gradient to the most dramatic views over a tiny cove, surrounded by sharp toothed rocks tumbled from vertiginous cliffs into a silver sea. It was so perfect and so memorable a day that even climbing back up the slopes was a pleasure, full of playful sparkling moments. The National Trust really made an effort: against the background of the D'Oily Carte's former residence, marvellous architecture and a playful approach to the displays, there was an atmosphere of delighted smugness which is rather fine in some circumstances. It made us feel flattered and cheerful; there was a pianist (did a bit of talking about matters musical) in the drawing room and a lovely cook offering scones with berry jam. The docents in the rooms were cheerful and chatty, friendly and responsive; the cafe had a nice selection of good food, the shop was full of rather interesting and varied merchandise. The rest of the four days was not so bright. The weather changed rapidly and the town of Taunton was not so inspiring. I visited the Willows and Wetlands Centre near Taunton, which impressed me for the reliance and determination of a family run firm, trying to keep their skilled workforce in employment, managing through a lot of famine interspersed with moments of frantic feast. The centre is very well worth visiting, with a museum, and a series of information spaces about the historical development of the area and the technical aspects of willow growing and working. You can do a tour of the works for a small fee though the rest of the centre is free to visit. I bought a rather clever bird feeding station that might discourage the squirrel and the crows... I was impressed particularly by the fact they make props for the movie industry (some torpedoes for War Horse) as well as the huge chess pieces in a recent horse jumping event; They also, apparently manufacture ALL the artists' charcoal that is sold all over the world. They export to countries as far away as canada and Australia and they had there the packaging of all art suppliers I can think of. Much less impressive was the visit to John Leach's pottery in Muchelney. His wife was on duty and after I had a look through the gallery I went up to her for a chat. There was nobody else anywhere on the premises, so she wasn't exactly rushed off her feet. When I told her that I was a potter from Derbyshire she could not have been less impressed. However, when I asked her whether she had had trouble with the floods, I got the long version, down to the insurance premium details and how many fridges had been lost, how many inches, the rant about the government... well, one does feel for people who are helpless in the face of natural disaster, of course. But the result nevertheless was that, instead of being tempted by the rather nice bottles with temmokku @ £350, one was merely tempted by the toasted coffee mug @ £14. After all, I am just as human as she is...
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Some friends of my family, in the dim and distant past, had a container with walking sticks in the hallway. We used to visit and, as a small child, I was amazed at such an ugly object. I felt a strong distaste for it and gave it a wide berth, for no reason. One Sunday afternoon, a group of friends came together in our garden and were sitting under a tree chatting over the ends of lunch. The conversation went around to hunting (things aren't what they used to be...). The children were scattered about with nothing to do and I was listening in. The particular safari at which that particular elephant had been shot, back in the early 50's, was a particularly cherished memory and recounted at length that quiet and pleasant day. It took time for the imagery to take hold in my head. It is not always easy for children to connect and contrast a personal feeling with a story that comes from such a different attitude in the adults: I ask myself today whether they had forgotten their own childhood thoughts, or whether it is a personal thing you are born with, the dark line in the sand which you will not cross. On that day, inside my heart, I knew that killing elephants was barbaric and sad, and that to take their body parts and turn them into hideous household objects was wrong. So that was a line I would not cross. I was clear from the start, but at the time I had no terms of reference, no context. Today, it sounds like an easy decision to make, but back then it was not without doubts that I approached this thought: the adults all seemed to see that severed foot as an object to be desired or, at least, to be admired. Years later, I had the chance to see elephant skin in its proper place: on a live elephant, in a safari park, in South Africa. The elephants there move in their family groups, in and out of territory that has been theirs for generations and in safety, though their space is invaded by humans on a regular basis. Seeing them up close is difficult and dangerous. Elephants in the wild will attack if they feel threatened and they are fast and agile and determined. But on a good day you can get close enough to see the deep and intricate wrinkles and crevices, the scars and the particular markings that tell of a life of foraging and fending off attack and disease. In the African bush, there is a dustiness in the vegetation and a relentlessness to the heat. The elephants cross these spaces, hide in shadows, wallow, touch one another and determine their course with a steady eyed ease. Their social life is as meaningful and intense as yours or mine. They pass by the other inhabitants of the savannah with equanimity and assurance. The night jar and the lion, the hyena and the vervet monkey share the water holes and the trails and the spiny trees of the elephant habitat. I am different from them. I visit their world and wonder at their peacefulness and economy of effort. I see their skin, and I know we are the same. This head was made from a memory, some years ago. I have long known the importance, for me, of remembering and recuperating the past and so, as soon as I started doing sculpture I had the idea of picking up a head a knew well and ageing it, as in one of those photofits they do for lost people many years later. The poor craftsmanship is a given, this poor man has lost his cheekbones, but then that was a result I intended to a certain extent. The real head has emerged now and I have something to compare although the thought strikes me that the recollection I have of facts and events is also not quite in focus. I have become more proud of my head now (it stands in my dining room!) and will never part with it, not because of the person it represents, but because it represents the person I was and became. Alan Yentob was interviewing Edmund de Waal a while ago for Imagine... The name of the program was "Make Pots or Die". I have been mulling things over for a bit.
I have tremendous respect for Edmund and I always admire the way Alan Yentob allows his guests to express themselves, and coaxes out of them a good extra scoop of thoughtfulness or feeling. I have read and loved The Hare with the Amber Eyes. I know this potter is serious, committed, very knowledgeable....can you hear the heavy hooves of my BUT approaching? ...I always see him, making pure white cylinders, little ones, tall ones (never fat ones), by the hundred, by the thousand. Sometimes they have a slight tremulous rim and last night there were having their foot shaved a bit. But I wait for the next thing. I wait for him to do the next thing and he does: he positions them in little groups on pure white shelves against pure white walls. They are never anything other than pure white cylinders, standing about together in groups or on parade, lost in space, cold, looking perplexed. My friend Jill says: you cannot know the mind of another person. Quite so. I completely believe that. But I do know my own mind: what comes next is my question and I can ask that. I guess I am expressing my mind in saying that the netsuke tell me more, and they were made so long ago, about now than what I can read in Edmund's cylinders. I can talk to them. I have an unsophisticated, illiterate mind, and I need a lot more explanations than I am getting from pure white. The netsuke are garrulous, dirty, convoluted, sneaky, so many things. But Edmund's pots are just there. They are frozen, waxy, and still. They do not scream, they do not question, they do not dance or lie down. He spoke os his first reaction to the netsuke, when uncle Iggy first showed them to him: each object would make the old man remember a story, a tableau, an episode of family life in those fabled times of old, when they were stupendously rich and very affable and well known. Edmund described how the object, handled, passed on to the new hand the story of all those hands that had caressed it over time. Also, how these perfect little gems can bewitch people, possess them. hence their great value. So, Edmund did not really like them, he could not make sense of such objects or the making of them. But now he owns them and he makes the connection between speaking in objects and building with words. His white porcelain tubes continue to multiply, referring to old jewish loss, to adversity on an unimaginable scale... I just don't get it. Where in those thousands of white tubes is all this? Is blank the ultimate end of the story? I will continue to look for that meaning: He says he tells stories with his pots; he has to make pots or die; I feel so stupid not understanding at all what he says but clearly see that making those cylinders is a must. Perhaps if I sit at the wheel and make a few?... |
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