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My conversation with Eric

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Vell Mill meadow near Dymock

This is the time of the wild daffodils, and one of the best surviving wild daffodil meadows in the UK is the Vell Mill meadow, where thousands of people used to visit during the spring – traveling up from London on the train to pick the flowers to take back and sell. They’d load them on the train known as the Daffodil Express.

from Bradlow Knoll

It is an easy and unchallenging walk along the Poets Path – a reminder of the area’s connections with Robert Frost, Edward Thomas and others poets, who used to walk “ankle-deep in daffodils”. And it’s not as challenging as climbing up to Bradlow Knoll, which was achieved for your benefit, and despite the treacherous mud, the strange ominous gunshots and creaking joints. As you can see from the photo, it’s still looking wintry.

Interior vase at the Palais des Vaches gallery, Exbury, Nr Southampton

This blog exists primarily to promote Peter Arscott Ceramics, but regular readers are well aware of my tendency to talk with spiders (Ziggy), with pug mills (Thelonious) and with a long-dead Bishop of Trimythous and Patron Saint of potters, Saint Spyridon (known as Spiro), who is in charge of marketing.  So you won’t be surprised about my conversation with Eric, a rat.

Eric

As I looked out of the studio window last week, I caught sight of a tail disappearing behind the compost. Some of you have already been introduced to Eric (see blog of Spring last year), and he has been a constant affront and aggravation since. His life was saved by a poet then, but by now I had had enough. I borrowed a humane rat trap and smeared a biscuit with peanut butter. Next day I had him at last in my power, though he seemed quite self-possessed given the situation.

Yoohoo vase at Palais des Vaches, Exbury, nr Southampton

‘So, what are you going to do? Shoot me? Drown me?”

“No, no drowning. You rats can hold your breath underwater for three minutes – so it would be prolonged and cruel. Did you know there are other species of rat that can swim for over a mile? So those stories about rats popping up in the toilet are not urban myths – you lot will easily make your way up a drainpipe and bite people’s bums for a laugh.”

“Drainpipes are cleaner than swimming in your rivers. You won’t see me anywhere near the River Wye – it’s like doing the breast stroke in treacle. Disgusting.  And I”m a rat!”, he said rather affectedly.

Good time vase at the Palais des Vaches, Exbury, nr Southampton

“Touché. Anyway, I’m taking you over two miles away and releasing you.”

“Oh? May I draw your attention to the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare document whose guiding principles in the humane control of rats and mice cover the welfare of trapped rodents and points out the relevance of the Animal Welfare Act 2006. If you will permit me to quote from the document, (and here he cleared his throat): Release of an animal elsewhere is not necessarily a humane thing to do – translocated animals may fail to adapt to or integrate into new territory and may suffer and die as a result (Mason and Littin, 2003)”.

“What are my alternatives? If I leave you at home, you just breed like…rats. Apparently, just one of your lady rats produces six litters a year consisting of up to 12 ratlets. And you reach sexual maturity after 4-5 weeks, meaning that a population can swell from two rats to around 1,250 in one year, with the potential to grow exponentially. I daren’t think how many of you there are living by the compost.”

“So what difference will getting rid of yours truly make? I’m just one little rat.”

“Yes, but I’ve been after you for a long time. You are the one who flaunts himself in front of the kitchen window, metaphorically cocking a snoop at me, provoking me. And now I’ve got you, thanks to peanut butter.”

Eric’s downfall – crunchy peanut butter on a Hovis biscuit

“Yes, that was delicious, I admit. Will you let me take some when you “release” me? It’ll tide me over until I settle down and get used to eating whatever it is that’s available in the countryside. What do you suggest?”

“ Nuts, berries, wild vegetables, snails, birds’ eggs. It’s a very healthy diet. You have to work hard – it’s not the easy living of feeding off my compost and garbage. And you’ll have to watch out for traffic and cows.”

a cow

“What are cows?”

“Oh dear. You are going to have a hard time, aren’t you. They are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved herbivores. “Vache” is French for cow, you know, and it so happens that I am exhibiting some of my stoneware vases at the Palais des Vaches, a fine gallery in Exbury, near Southampton.”

Here I will stop talking to Eric and tell readers that included in the pieces on show is a new piece which refers to Betty Woodman, one of the great ceramicists whose approach to making pots was always an inspiration to someone who enjoys painting as much as shaping clay. Click here to visit her site.

Betty vase. Palais des Vaches, Exbury, Nr Southampton

To get back to Eric – I did take him 2 miles away in the car and released him in a very inviting meadow with lots of hedgerows and trees. He took with him some peanut butter on a Hovis biscuit, and, as an extra measure and gesture of goodwill, I gave him 50p. I have not seen him since but if any of you see him hitchhiking in the Ledbury area, you are NOT to give him a lift.

River Wye. Photo by Claire Ward

On a less whimsical note, concerned as Eric by the state our main river and its slow poisoning, the whole PAC team has joined the Save the Wye campaign. The Environment Agency says the main excess nutrient that is causing concern is phosphate and that more than 60 per cent of the phosphate in the Wye catchment, which causes harmful “blooms” of algae, comes from poultry and other livestock manure washing into the river during rainfall. This accounts for approximately 72-74% of phosphates entering rivers, turning them into pea soup.

Peggy Sue, pooping polluter

The situation is compounded by discharges from sewage treatment works, which are regulated through Environmental Permits, accounting for approximately 21-23% of phosphates entering rivers. #SaveTheWye is an umbrella campaign to support and build the network of organisations and individuals working to protect and restore the health of the River Wye and its tributaries, for the benefit of both wildlife and people: https://linktr.ee/savethewye

The display at the Palais

Goodbye from Eric

The Spirit with no anus – pottery and anthropology

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Walking up to Bradlow Knoll on a bleak overcast day can be heavy going, and though I like to think I ascended the hill like a young impala, the truth is that it was …  heavy going. Recovering my breath on C.J.’s bench, I decided to continue further into Frith Wood, on your behalf, as there was a possibility that the snowdrops were still in bloom, and I could take some photos for the blog. Alas, I was too late, and too early for anemones and bluebells. It was all a dull greyish brown, with little to attract the eye, so inevitably one’s mind wandered.

 

Every so often, ceramic vases fling themselves headlong to the floor, shattering into many pieces with that splintering sound that is so alarming. Or else they’ll explode in a muffled thud in the kiln during a firing. Or sometimes you’ll hear that gentle click as one vase touches another and a handle you spent half a day getting right weeks ago drops off. It is not an obvious issue related to ceramics, that of the sound clay makes, but a recent pinging heard on opening the kiln prematurely (revealing a long thin hairline fracture on a vase) brought it to mind.

Yours truly ascending Bradlow Knoll. Photo Hein Waschefort

This was reinforced when I met a professor of anthropology at a party recently. He has written a paper regarding the symbolic resonances of clay, pottery-making, and pottery objects amongst Northwest Amazonian peoples that adds to our understanding of how indigenous populations think about, and relate to, the production and use of ceramic objects, especially in the contexts of ritual and cosmology. Yes, these are the sort of parties I go to.

Capuchin monkey. Photo David M. Jensen

He told me about the Colombian Pirá-Paraná region’s version of the story that accounts for the origin of the clay used to make pottery.  As you have no doubt worked out from the blog’s title, it is an earthy and unpretentious story, and squeamish readers may now want to turn away and just look at the pictures. OK?  Here goes. The Spirit with no anus began visiting the children in the house of his neighbour, swearing them to secrecy, entertaining them with his ankle rattles and maracas, and running away when the adults appeared. When the youngest child divulged everything, the Spirit boiled them in a cooking pot, though the youngest one escaped and told his father, who retrieved the children’s bones, which he beat with leaves, thus bringing them back to life as capuchin monkeys. Much later the Spirit came upon the father fishing in a lake. The father let off a loud and sonorous fart, and the Spirit with no anus, of course, wanted to know how he achieved this. The father explained that one needed an anus, and that if he wanted, he’d make the Spirit one by poking a stick up his backside. Which he did, hammering the stick further and further into his body until it came out through his throat and the Spirit fell down dead.

The Spirit’s smooth backside, an upturned Barasana pot (collection of Dr Stephen Hugh-Jones, photo by same)

Now, bear with me. The Spirit is Clay Father. The flesh and other soft parts of his body became the pungent, bluish-grey potting-clay that is extracted from holes in the banks of streams. The Spirit was a creator deity who gave rise to the earth, and his smooth backside is the underside of a cooking pot; the pot’s mouth is his voracious, open maw; and from the pot’s point of view, when the father retrieves his children’s bones, the pot vomits them from his open mouth. Today he appears as a pottery trumpet.

Uriro pottery trumpet, the Spirit with an anus. Collection of Dr Hugh-Jones

From flatulence to flutes, and the ceramic instruments made long ago in South America, clay lends itself to being blown into to produce all sorts of sounds. Just think of the humble ocarina, the Andean clay pipe, the clay whistle and the percussive pot drums, often made in animal or human form, probably for ceremonial functions or as playthings.

Chimu whistling jar. Circa 1470

The “whistling jar” is a 1- or 2-chambered vessel in which a whistle, often concealed by a bird’s head, is sounded by blowing into the spout, or by pouring liquid from one chamber to the other to create a bird-like twittering sound. Smaller whistles in animal shapes, perhaps worn suspended from the neck, frequently have fingerholes that allow variation of pitch. Sometimes, the sound it creates mimics the creature represented.

The poster above is to call your attention to The Chuffed Store Pop-up shop which is appearing at 16 Seymour Place, Marylebone, London, W1H 7NG  until 26th March. You will not see clay trumpets, ocarinas or fat-bottomed pots there, but you will see fine examples of Peter Arscott ceramics, including three-legged bowls and large stoneware platters. Dotted incoherently around this blog are images of said pieces.

Clay ocarina, Paracas, Peru.

If you’d like to try making a clay ocarina yourself,  click here – the first person who succeeds and sends me a video showing it in action will win a three-legged bowl.

 

Going anywhere near Chichester?

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Hello all. Apologies for the brevity of this blog (though some of you might be relieved to be spared the usual ramblings). Oxmarket Contemporary is hosting its first of the Open Winners’ Exhibitions on 14th – 25th February.  The Open offered five categories of submission including the applied arts (craft), drawing and illustration, painting, print and photography and sculpture. This exhibition features the winners from the Drawing and Illustration and Applied Arts Categories. It includes yours truly.

Chris Shaw Hughes won the Drawing and Illustration prize, he creates photo realistic drawings that document pivotal moments of history in specific places.

Jane Eastell one of the joint winners of the Applied Arts prize works with a variety of clay bodies, either hand building or using a potter’s wheel. Jane experiments with different glazes and decoration techniques and produces beautiful work.

Peter Arscott (yes, that’s me) the other joint winner of the Applied Arts prize uses grogged stoneware, which lends itself to modelling and shaping. Peter makes one-off pieces, he sees the pot or vase as a form you can play with.

Oxmarket Contemporary will be open 10.00am – 4.30pm, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. the gallery is in St. Andrew’s Court, off East Street, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 1YH.

Ledbury’s surreal connections

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Ledbury down below

There is a lot of doc leaf in the fields and meadows at this time of year – they turn a dark ox blood red as their seeds appear and are easily identified as they stand out in the green landscape. This is very noticeable walking up the hill to Bradlow Knoll. The reason they command the eye’s attention is that we humans find red on green, or green on red, a very strong and vigorous combination – both colours are opposites on the colour chart, as blue is to orange, or yellow to violet, though these do not have the same force.

Doc

Interestingly, blue, red, and yellow are primary colours, whereas green is not (being made of yellow and blue) but has the personality of a primary colour. Anyway, try putting a piece of pure green paper next to a central red (one that pulls nether to yellow or to blue) and you might see the edge where they meet seemingly vibrate.

This is what goes through one’s head when walking up a hill towards a wood, this and “did I switch the kiln on?”, and “how do birds pee?”, and “which would be the nicest if animals could talk?” Once on top of the hill, the view below, with Ledbury’s steeple in the mid-distance, turns one’s attention in another direction.

Red and Green vase at Take 4 Gallery

Ledbury has become a popular destination for visitors recently, or it could be that they are all “passing through” on their way to Wales. Nevertheless, seeing the place where you live through the eyes of a stranger is good – what you usually accept as commonplace is often special when looked at objectively. For example, it really is extraordinary that so small a place has such links with poets such as Masefield, Barrett Browning, Auden, Frost and Thomas, or that  Butchers Row museum once stood in the middle of the High Street with seven others buildings and saw the slaughter of animals on a regular basis, the blood and effluvia mingling with the stream that ran down Church Lane leading to outbreaks of typhoid – until the buildings were bought out by public subscription and knocked down.

Zephyr vase at Take 4 Gallery, Ledbury

Though Ledbury is no stranger than any other place, it does exhibit a Tibetan flute or pipe fashioned from the thigh bone of a human, it did have church sextons who carried long sticks to wake up those who were nodding off with a tap on the head, and it did have pavements made of large cobbles or “petrified kidneys” that were big enough to send clog-wearing Ledburians flying.

Objective chance. Conroy Maddox

So, Ledbury has its “surreal” moments, but few places can boast of being the birthplace of a true surrealist painter like Conroy Maddox. He was born in 1912, upstairs  in what is now the Herefordshire Wildlife Trust shop, next door to the Poetry House on the corner of Bye Street. A painter, collagist, writer and lecturer; he discovered surrealism in 1935, spending the rest of his life exploring its potential through his paintings, photographs, objects and texts. He rejected academic painting in favour of techniques that expressed the surrealistic spirit of rebellion.

The Dressing of the Crabs. Conroy Maddox poster for the first Ledbury Poetry Festival 1997

His creations soon began not only to challenge the conventional view of reality, but also to push pictorial expression to the limits of consciousness. He was even implicated in both scandal and controversy when, during the Second World War, Scotland Yard suspected him of fifth columnist sabotage and mounted a surprise raid to seize works thought to contain coded messages to the enemy.

Party guest

Weekend parties at Maddox’s house drew in a wide variety of unconventional attendees, and guardian journalist Tim Hilton recalled in his obituary of the artist: “Festivities were common in Maddox’s surrealist villa. I attended carousals there with other undisciplined children, women in Gypsy dress, poets, communist intellectuals from the University of Birmingham, and early postwar Caribbean immigrants … The Balsall Heath house also contained dozens of unsold paintings and many photographs of Maddox in the company of a nun. Some of their activities involved a crucifixion, the naked but bespectacled Maddox its victim, while the nun drank from a two-pint bottle of the local brew, Mitchell’s and Butler’s.”

Fountain by Marcel Duchamp

The obvious link between ceramics and surrealism is Marcel Duchamp’s inverted porcelain urinal signed “R.Mutt” and titled “Fountain.” Sadly, this will not be on show during Herefordshire Art Week, a nine-day art trail open to all (3 – 11 September).  Artists, craft makers and creative businesses open their private studios every day from 11am – 5pm.

Matisse vase at Take 4 Gallery, Ledbury. hArt

The Take Four Gallery on the High Street will be exhibiting some pieces by Peter Arscott Ceramics, and there will be demonstrations at 11 and at 2 on Thursday 8th September on how to make a three-legged urinal, er..sorry…bowl.

Three legged bowl at Take 4 Gallery

h.Art has become part of Herefordshire’s cultural calendar, with a huge variety of art and art forms on show in open studios, group exhibitions and gallery events. The vast majority offer free admission to visitors, in locations such as manor houses, historic barns, farms, churches and beautiful gardens.

Back in the cool of Frith Wood, with no other walkers on a very early Monday morning, the eery silence was only occasionally broken by birdsong, and at one point a sudden crashing through the undergrowth revealed the light brown back of a fleeing deer. If Surrealism was an avant-garde movement in art and literature which sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images, then this was a good setting – substitute pike for deer.

From predatory pike to printed prose: let me introduce you to the Stand Magazine and to Jon Silkin, poet, editor and critic who established it with his £5 redundancy money (received after trying to organise some of his fellow manual workers) as a ‘stand’ against injustice and oppression, and to ‘stand’ for the role that the arts, poetry and fiction in particular, could and should play in that fight.

Silkin

As described by the poet Rodney Pybus, Stand is “….. a place where the unglamorous, the unfashionable, the oppositional, the innovative, the unEnglish, the radical voices might gain a hearing as well as the more conventional, acceptable and consensual voices.”

My short story, Maxwell’s Nose, probably belongs to the “conventional, acceptable and consensual” stable.  If you’d like to read it you can click here for the website, and you can read the intro, though you would have to buy an individual copy (£7 inc postage) through the editor at engstand@leeds.ac.uk to read the whole story, or else subscribe online. Excellent poetry contributions.

Goodbye

Disgruntled staff and fundraising

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Looking at some of the pieces that have recently come out of the kiln, like the one above, anybody might think that Peter Arscott Ceramics is keen on making work that displays the principles of movement, by showing flowing lines and edges that we find in the natural world. But it is rhythm and pattern in the mark making that is of primary concern and this sometimes leads to this impression of movement – repetition of elements or colours. We are just as keen on placing spots on the surfaces, which achieve the opposite, anchoring a design, like the one below.

Talking of repetition, staff meetings are held regularly at PAC. One was recently held to discuss stock levels. Over coffee, Thelonious (pug mill), Spyridon (marketing), Ziggy (fly control) and I agreed that there is nothing worse than having stock that is uncherished and unseen. Subsequently, we are going to display those pieces that didn’t quite make the grade, those “not quite right” vases, those skewed pieces, those stunted or, frankly, unresolved ceramics that have been lurking in some dark corner of the studio, forgotten and unloved but which will for once have a chance to have others cast their eyes on them and decide their worth.

Spyridon, Thelonious and Ziggy

Because all these stoneware vessels are fired to such a high temperature in the kiln (1270°) they are essentially vitrified and will withstand any temperature out in the garden. They are frost-proof. And you’d be surprised how good the most questionable ceramic can look once it has been strategically placed outdoors among shrubs and bushes, or on terraces, or on a balcony or windowsill with suitable plants in them. You may even like one enough to put on your kitchen table, but what I am saying is that despite their flaws they retain some allure if carefully positioned around or outside the house.

So obviously we are not going to charge you for any of these little ceramic orphans. No. We are going to ask those of you who come to see and take, to leave a donation in a box that will be left outside in the garden near the display. You can leave as much or as little as you like, but it will go to a charitable cause.

Thelonious wanted any money to go to a retirement scrapyard for old pugmills, Spiro pressed for donations to go to a home in Greece for retired goatherds, and Ziggy, despite our best attempts at explaining the idea of “charitable” to him, wanted to invest it all in a large glass maggot-breeding farm and fly dispenser. However, as the boss, I have decided that it should go to towards the Ledbury Poetry Festival Community Projects at the new Poetry House in Ledbury to help cater for the many communal events planned to take place there.

“What’s poetry got to do with pottery?” sneered the sulking Ziggy.

“The only difference is the letter t” I riposted.

“You’ve said that so many times before that it is no longer witty,” murmured Spiro.

“Yes,” added Thelonious, “you are repeating yourself quite often nowadays.”

“Listen, you lot,” I said with rising anger, “this is all a bit rich coming from a cast iron contraption that can only compress used clay! As for you, Spyridon, I haven’t heard you ever say anything witty, possibly because you are a third century goatherd and Bishop of Trimythous, but mainly (I suspect) because you are a figment of my imagination, one to whom I have entrusted this enterprise’s marketing campaign!”

There was a hushed silence in the studio.

“And Ziggy, don’t forget that, as a spider, you are here on sufferance because you keep the fly population under control.”

There followed murmured protests and vague threats of a strike, which (like the present government) I chose to ignore. Then my wife came into the studio with a suspicious look in her eyes and asked me if I’d been talking to myself again, which I denied. Perhaps I have been working on my own too much.

So, if you are interested, please make your way to Oakland House, The Homend, Ledbury, HR8 1AP and park on the road, if you are driving, by the gate, skip up the seven steps into the front garden and have a look. If anything takes your fancy, take it and leave your donation in the nearby box. The images accompanying this blog show some of the ceramics that will be on display. They will be there on Saturday 16th and Sunday 17thJuly, from 10am to 6pm.

For those of you wanting to spend as little as possible (hard times and steeper bills are heading our way, after all) there will also be some small three legged bowls to choose from, mainly from when Peter Arscott Ceramics used to be “belatrova” – you’ll find the “b” mark on those, as opposed to the PAC mark.

Although somebody will be at home , Covid has struck, so nobody contagious will come out to greet you. A forlorn wave from a window is all you might get, though staff, being  a machine, a figment and a spider, are not affected. Finally, and with Ziggy’s woeful attitude in mind, and because this is a ceramics blog, and because we have had a highly successful Ledbury Poetry Festival, I’ll finish with the part of the last stanza of John Keat’s poem, Ode to a Grecian Urn:

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, —that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

John Keats by William Hilton, National Portrait Gallery

Arscott Ceramics goes pannaging

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Lord Lyons

“If you’re given champagne at lunch, there’s a catch somewhere”, said one of the great diplomats of 19th century Britain, Lord Lyons, a man who loved gastronomy and agreed with Palmerston’s remark that ‘dining is the soul of diplomacy’, and offered at least five courses of Moet & Chandon champagne at his diplomatic dinners because he found that, as ambassador to the United States, it made senators more accommodating.

Lymington

Lyons was born in the coastal town of Lymington, which is where Arscott Ceramics was heading with a delivery for the Coastal Gallery. It turns out that it is also the birthplace of  Ben Ainslie, Britain’s foremost competitive sailor, and the singer Birdy. The things one learns.

Landscape vase

To get to Lymington one has to drive through the New Forest, one of the largest remaining tracts of unenclosed pastureland, heathland and forest in Southern England and proclaimed a royal forest by William the Conqueror way back in the 11th century.

Vase 3

Pre-existing rights of common pasture are still recognised today and are enforced by official verderers, and Commoners’ cattle, ponies and donkeys roam throughout the open heath and much of the woodland. It is largely their grazing that maintains the open character of the Forest. They are also frequently seen straying into the Forest villages, shops and pubs (horse walks into a bar. “Hey!” says the bartender, “You read my mind” says the horse). The New Forest pony is one of the indigenous horse breeds of the British Isles and most of the Forest ponies are of this breed, but there are also some Shetlands and their crossbreeds.

Brusher Mills

It remains a habitat for many rare birds and mammals. All three British native species of snake inhabit the Forest. The adder, the grass snake and the rare smooth snake. It was mainly adders which were caught by Brusher Mills (1840–1905), the “New Forest Snake Catcher”. He caught many thousands in his lifetime, sending some to London Zoo as food for their animals. You can see Brusher’s grave in St Nicholas’ Church, Brockenhurst, where villagers paid for a marble headstone to mark his final resting place. It does not say how he died.

salt marshes outside Lymington – Isle of Wight on horizon

A quick watercolour of the salt marshes outside Lymington was affected by blustery winds blowing the easel down and by an irrational awareness of the possibility of any three of these species of snake having an opinion on landscape art – all British snakes are now legally protected, and so the New Forest snakes are no longer caught and it logically follows that there must be many more of them lurking in bushes nowadays.

porcus beatus

One or two of the ceramic pieces rattled around in their boxes as the car suddenly braked to avoid running over a pig. Yes, a pig. In fact there were various small porkers rooting around on the edge of the road and it turns out that it is not an uncommon sight to see pigs roaming in the autumn months. Pannage is the practice of releasing domestic pigs into a forest to eat fallen acorns and other nuts. Acorns are poisonous in large quantities to cattle and ponies and can lead to cholic whereas piggies spit out the toxic skins and enjoy eating the acorns. Pannage: late Middle English: from Old French pasnage, from medieval Latin pastionaticum, from pastio(n- ) ‘pasturing’, from the verb pascere ‘to feed’.

Up to 600 pigs and piglets will work their way through the forest but must be fitted with a ring through their nose which still enables them to forage through leaf litter and surface vegetation but stops them from rooting into the ground with their snouts causing damage to the Forest.

Those of you who have been following this blog since the start will know that pigs are often brought up because of their link to ceramics, and this blog is no exception. Yes, the word “porcelain” is derived from the Italian porcellana which translates as cowrie shell and refers to porcelain’s similarly smooth surface. Porcella means little pig, which describes the small plump shape of the cowrie.

Klee vase

Which is the point of this blog, of course, to tell you about Arscott Ceramics and what is new. The stoneware pieces seen in these images can all be inspected at the Coastal Gallery in Lymington, a small but wonderful gallery run by Stewart and Bev. Do pay them a visit and combine the experience with a walk into town, perhaps a dip in the Sea Water Baths (the oldest lido in the country) and, to recover, a stiff drink at the quayside where you can sit and gaze across the harbour at the UK’s most expensive coastal real estate, Sandbanks. Finish it off with a slow drive through the New Forest.

Man walks into a bar with a pig under his arms.

“Where did you get that disgusting creature?” asks the barman.

“I won him in a raffle” replies the pig.

loop bottle

Worcester’s ceramics, swans and sauce.

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Arscott at the Bevere Gallery

You would not normally associate the city of Worcester (pronounced Wuster) with the pong of rotting fish and other ingredients, but it is thanks to a certain Lord Sandys in the 1830s that two local chemists, John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins were approached  and paid to come up with an anchovy-based sauce that the former had tasted in India and which he wanted to have made. However, it was deemed to be a disappointing flop and abandoned in a barrel, only to be rediscovered many months later and, to everyone’s surprise, the taste had mellowed into what we know as Worcestershire Sauce. To this day, the ingredients are allowed to ‘mature’ for 18 months before being blended and bottled in Worcester.

Best in a Bloody Mary

Those of you unfamiliar with this dark brown liquid will want to know what you do with it. Well, I like to sprinkle it into the mincemeat when a making Cottage Pie. Or Spaghetti Bolognaise: pour it in to the mince whilst it is simmering away and add a nice big splash just before you serve it up.  The company suggests a splash Worcestershire sauce in your baked beans, or your fish and chips, even in your green salad. They seem to imply that it goes with pretty much anything, but I would personally keep it well away from, say, bananas, or ice cream, or Spotted Dick. Whatever you do, do not sprinkle it into your single malt whisky, but a drop or two in a Bloody Mary is a must. Above is a picture of the sauce; the watch strap is not a Rolex but a cheap one I bought locally. I wouldn’t want you to think that I’m making a fortune out of my ceramics

Worcester Cathedral from the river

I expect you know why I’m going on about Worcester – I was delivering ceramics to the Bevere Gallery, which meant driving on the bridge over the River Severn into the city with the Cathedral sitting impressively over the dark water away to the right. The bright white specks floating about in the almost Worcester Sauce – coloured river are swans, which are always here because for many years the area between the railway viaduct and the Worcester Cathedral Ferry has been designated as a Swan Sanctuary. There is now a large and healthy population of Mute Swans on the water. Fishing in this area is banned and the swans are supported by a number of organisations including the City Council. The local Tourist Board extols “the natural beauty and general friendliness of these swans”. Note the word “general” – in other words, keep away from them or they could turn nasty, like the notorious one in Cambridge called Mr Asbo (Anti-Social Behaviour Order) that had to be deported because it kept attacking people and boats. But, yes, they do look spectacular in the river.

Mr Asbo strikes again

There was no time to stop at the cathedral and say hello to King John who was buried here in 1216 after contracting dysentery in Lynn. John is most famous for agreeing to the Magna Carta, which was a charter of demands made by John’s rebellious barons and the basis for much of our present rights as individuals. When he died he had lost most of his French lands, and was in the midst of a civil war against many of his own barons, though the current consensus is that John was a hard-working administrator, an able man, an able general, albeit with distasteful, even dangerous personality traits, including pettiness, spitefulness and cruelty, which is why he is always the “baddie” in the Robin Hood movies. Anyway, here’s a picture of him getting angry because someone forgot to put the top back on his bottle of Worcester Sauce.

Bad, bad King John

But I digress. I was on my way to the Bevere Gallery, an oasis of ceramic calm on the outskirts of the city, where visitors can really enjoy a high quality and varied selection of pieces on display and then sit down in the café and enjoy what’s on offer (the food is very good). Bevere is the name of an island in the Severn, 2 ½ miles N of Worcester. It is supposed to have been a resort of beavers; was a retreat of the inhabitants of Worcester during the plague of 1637; and is now, they say, a good bathing-place. It commands a fine view of the Abberley and the Malvern hills.

“Interior” vase at Bevere

And talking of ceramics, how could I not mention Royal Worcester porcelain which used to be made here in the 18th century until the Severn Street factory was closed down in 2006? One of its best-sellers was the Evesham Gold series, and samples can be seen at the Museum of Royal Worcester. There were various factories each producing distinctive wares: Flight and Barr, Chamberlain, Hadley and Sons, Kerr and Binns, Grainger and Dr Wall ( Dr John Wall perfected a recipe for porcelain that could withstand boiling water and this discovery led to the fame of the factory).

Evesham Gold

But back to the Bevere Gallery. Informality is an essential element here. You are encouraged to look at, handle and talk freely and openly about what you see – you can be as rude or polite as you like. Stuart and Clare like to engage and talk about the making and creative process. They also hold a Makers’ Lunch, an informal opportunity to talk with ceramicists and artists whose work is exhibited; an unpredictable two hours of conversation with open and frank discourse with the invited maker. They would be very happy to welcome you.

Crouch vase at Bevere

array of glazed fine art ceramic bowls by belatrova

Far from the Madding Crowd

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photo of people swimming in Mallorca

far from the madding crowd

Heat has a strange effect on some humans. When temperatures hit a high, as they did this August in many parts of Europe and the Mediterranean, confusion and dizziness set in, common effects of too much exposure to extreme heat because of increased blood flow to dilated blood vessels and fluid loss through sweating. This sometimes happens to belatrova when the kiln is going full blast and ceramic production is in full flow as we try to feed the insatiable appetite for our products – on the other hand a cold Dry Martini often wards off any lasting effects.

dry landscape of Mallorca

Mallorca inland

This August was an excuse to go abroad for a break before moving into the new workshop in Ledbury (about which more in the next blog).

watercolour of Mallorca

towards the monastery of Sant Salvador

Mallorca is a beautiful island that has lured many foreigners over the years, from Chopin to Robert Graves, and, this year, belatrova. But mass tourism is affecting it much as it is elsewhere. Barcelona, Venice, Edinburgh, Lisbon, Dubrovnik, Skye are all examples of unmanageable jam-packed destinations filled with visitors on holiday. ” Tourist: your luxury trip / my daily misery“, says a placard in the Parque Guell (Barcelona). “Tourists go home. Refugees welcome” was the graffiti that greeted us as we drove to Felanitx for our week in Mallorca.

pool shadow

tourist

And who can blame residents when all anyone can do on the beautiful beaches and calas is to stand waist-deep in the water surrounded on all sides by others similarly engaged in staring at the horizon with arms folded and wondering how to escape – we did find a great spot though, as you can see from the first image.

drawing of tourist on mobile

tourist with mobile

Go inland and the atmosphere changes and the landscape is an engaging mixture of the agricultural and dramatic, from fertile farmland and Aleppo pine forests to the limestone mountains of the Serra de Tramuntana and the summer flowering of oleander, hibiscus, marigolds and orchids.

 

cacti

away from the tourists

If you really want to get away from any crowds, we recommend a visit to Botanicactus, a cactus sanctuary (though belatrova believes they are quite capable of defending themselves) where the cacti flourish in the dry and sunny climate and the landscape has been specifically designed to protect the plants, with the creation of the artificial lake and raised terraces protecting the plants from the wind. While everyone is at the beach you can wander about in perfect solitude surrounded by these giant prickly beings.

 

glazed bowl with painting

belatrova’s Miró bowl

Among the many artists associated with the island is Joan Miró, painter, sculptor and ceramicist born in Barcelona, but resident in the latter part of his long life in Palma where he bequeathed a collection that is the basis for his Fundació Joan Miró which we visited one morning.

 

retro 1950s style bowl

retro bowl (three legs)

It is a purpose-built exhibition space that uses thinly cut alabaster as a source of light into the rooms and has pools of water outside in the gardens that reflect their own light through low cut openings at floor level – and the whole complex stands on a hill overlooking the bay of Palma. We watched white sails racing each other in the distance, the ferry from Barcelona ploughing its way to the docks, and three giant cruise ships blocking part of the harbour architecture as they disgorged their passengers into the city for the day.

 

fundació Joan Miró

But back to Miró; tiny forms in huge empty spaces, deep blue cerulean sky-like canvases, crescent moons, birds, meandering shapes, his work is captivating and has inevitably inspired belatrova, back in Herefordshire, to make a few ceramics in his style.

array of bowls by belatrova

inspired bowls

If you’d like to see them come and pay us a visit at our old workshop at No9 Bankside Studios during hArt, which runs from Saturday 9th to Sunday 17th (open daily 10 – 5pm), just follow the red hArt signs in Ledbury, or use the postcode: HR8 2DR. You are most welcome. As the hArt website says: “Meet hundreds of individual artists, see an array of artwork across the county in the city and countryside, in fabulous locations such as manor houses, historic barns, farms, churches and beautiful gardens.”

 Finally, belatrova shed a tear on learning of the death of Walter Becker, guitarist and composer, who with Donald Fagen was one half of the unforgettable Steely Dan. We invite you to click here and listen to one of their middle period songs (skip the ad): subtle player that he was, technically dexterous, meticulous master of the instrumental gesture and never a grand-stander, “some of his most intriguing work is embedded in the background – the architectural arpeggios of “Aja,” or the wry, blues-tinged asides that dot the margins of “Hey Nineteen.” (Tom Moon / NPR Music)

Many a bowl was made listening to Walter on his guitar.

When all the dime dancing is through,                                                                                                                              I run to you..

apple harvest on a table

“Slack ma girdle, Foxwhelp.”

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ceramic fruit bowl
“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run...” (John Keats)

image of grapes on a vine

belatrova bunch

At belatrova we started turning our thoughts to Autumn, what with the leaves beginning to turn and that scent of damp and smoke that permeates the countryside near the workshop. We also discovered a taste for perry – surprising given that we seem (from the blog) to be serious cocktail sippers rather than quaffers of fermented fruit juices. We told you how to make the perfect Dry Martini some time ago. Perry is very much an Autumnal drink, and we visited a local small holding to see how it is made.

image of bottle of local perry pear

perry made from blakeney red

Has this anything to do with ceramics or table making? Probably not. The Blakeney Red is a greenish yellow perry pear with a red flush on the sunny side, an old favourite which was even considered a desert pear in the 1600s. which could also be stewed and used to dye soldiers’ khaki uniforms. This popular pear is renowned for perry making and is considered one of the best single perry varieties. The perry we tried was made from this pear.

How does this link in to ceramics, I hear you ask? Well, perry pears had their heyday in the late 17th and early 18th centuries and it is thought that there are at least 120 Perry pear varieties, many so local that they were only ever propagated on 1 or 2 adjacent farms. The heritage of these pears leaves us with some fantastic variety names, including Dead Boy, Mumblehead and Merrylegs. Some cider apple names? Brown Snout, Foxwhelp, Tremlett, Slack-ma-Girdle.

apple harvest on a table

worcester apples

So far we have found no obvious links to ceramics and pottery, however, Stinking Bishop perry pear is local and used by Charles Martel, cheese maker supreme and reviver of Single Gloucester, whose washed-rind cheeses are immersed in the perry for 4 weeks while it matures. It is made from milk of Gloucester cattle, and became famous when it starred in “Wallace & Gromit: the Curse of the Were-Rabbit“. Here is a picture of late Autumn lillies to wave away the scent of cheese:

late autumnal lilly in sunlight

some kind of lilly

Throughout Herefordshire there is a strong tradition of farm cider-making. Farmers produced cider to be drunk by the farm labour force during the following year, especially the busy times of hay-making and harvest. Farmers used to sell cider to local pubs and cider merchants for re-sale in towns. By the way, perry pear trees take much longer to mature than cider apple trees, thus:

“Who sets an apple tree may live to see it end,
Who sets a pear tree may set it for a friend.”

a three legged ceramic fruit bowl with apples

fruit bowl

Like the pear tree, belatrova has also paced its maturity to get to the stage we are now at. So if there is a seasonal change in the air, belatrova too reflects this. We have added two new categories to our website which we would love you to visit – just click on either: Fruit bowls and serving dishes and Ceramic art. Enjoy the visual sipping, get merry on home decor ideas, refresh your taste buds.

three legged spotted bowl

ceramic art? More Fresian than Hereford

cartoon of bishop

an old stinker

 

 

paper cut-out of dog

The Bankside bestiary

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It has been busy at the studio this summer, so it was not until recently that we started to take in the seasonal activity outdoors; the (slightly) warmer weather, the greenery, the butterflies, the bees, the birds. The various creatures reminded us that most animals that feature in belatrova have been portrayed or referred to in our blogs, not in “real life”. Should we have a pet at the workshop? We at belatrova do not have an official pet, as such, though we have had many animals on our blogs since 2013, and, just to remind you, we are scattering images of them throughout this blog.

 

centipede

Ed Millipede

Many claim that pets have a calming effect on our bodies and minds, that they reduce blood pressure and lower stress, that pets at the workplace make employees more creative, productive, and cordial with each other. This would be a good thing.

 

Jim

Jim

A digital online marketing agency conducted a survey of three thousand office workers, and 16% had an office pet, the top ten pets being fish, dogs, cats, tortoises, birds, rabbits, guinea pigs, geckos, snakes and tarantulas. As many as 55% of those canvassed admitted they would feel more motivated if they did have a pet in the office, though in our case, since one of us is a serious arachnophobe, tarantulas would be at the bottom of the list. This is despite Ziggy the house spider being a past visitor (see Oct blog 2014).

 

house spider wearing Xmas hat

Ziggy

Indeed, a research undertaken on domestic dogs and human health (published in 2007 in the British Journal of Health Psychology) suggested that pet owners tend to be healthier – dog owners have lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol and are less likely to have minor and serious health problems. We wonder if this also applies to cockerel owners?

 

cockerel statue at Trafalgar

giant alarm clock

So what is it about dogs? A carnivorous mammal that typically has a long snout, an acute sense of smell, non-retractile claws, and barking, howling, or whining voice, the domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris) is a domesticated animal selectively bred for various behaviours, sensory capabilities, and physical attributes.

 

Their long association with people has allowed dogs to be uniquely attuned to human behaviour. We very occasionally get a visit from one of these fearsome creatures, but only with her (so-called) master. Rowan has been selectively bred to sniff out and hunt badgers, but she kindly agreed to having her Brockian search interrupted and posed for us in a belatrova birdbath with great dignity.

 

And just in case we have digressed a long way from our intended theme, let us show you a few of our ceramic pieces. All totally unrelated to beasties, but it is what we do best:

 

 

And so it’s goodbye from him…

medieval bestiary