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Want to know what Nasocarpia is?

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November view

Sometimes, when having to make a great physical effort, it helps to have a mantra echoing in your head. Rutile is a good word to pronounce, like, say, elbow or helicopter. The sort of word that comes into your head for no apparent reason when you’re trudging up Bradlow Hill. Anything to take your mind off the increasingly challenging gradient and the pain in your lungs.

Shallow roots

When I finally made it into Frith Wood I saw a fallen tree. I was surprised at how shallow its roots seemed. I suspected that this is due to the trees being tightly packed in a small area and thus competing for light by concentrating on shooting up as high as possible and not wasting time with root depth. But a little research showed that when life gets tough, the roots take the easy option, staying close to the surface and spreading out a long way from the tree. A common misconception is that the root system is a mirror image of the trunk and branches. It turns out a tree’s root system is surprisingly shallow, dominated by long, lateral roots spreading out close to the soil surface and outwards and beyond the branch spread. So, trees are much like us – given to taking the easy option.

Oyster mushroom

The trunks of older trees were hosts to all sorts of fungi, and here’s an image of an oyster mushroom. Mushrooms do not have roots; they have mycelium— a root system that is a mass of filaments called hyphae. I expect you know that. These web-like structures spread into the substrate the fungus is growing on – wood, soil, dead squirrels or compost, and the purpose of the mycelium is to find food sources and collect nutrients for the final creation of its bloom or flower: the mushroom.

Large rutile serving dish (50 cms diam)

There was a reason for the word rutile popping into my head during the hill climb. Rutile (its name is derived from the Latin rutilus meaning “shining, golden-red”) is an oxide mineral composed of titanium dioxide which produces many surprising effects in glazes during cooling in the kiln and is used to enhance the surface character of ceramics.

Rutile spot vase

In other words, you do not know exactly what you’re going to get when you open the kiln, specially if you pour an iron oxide glaze over a bisque surface that has been painted with rutile – it’s all in the lap of the God of Pottery, Khnum, who was depicted by the ancient Egyptians with a ram’s head. He was the creator of the bodies of human children which he made at a potter’s wheel, from clay, and placed in their mothers’ womb. His title was the “Divine Potter”.

Small rutile signal vase

Back to the subject of roots and uprooting, it’s sad saying goodbye to an old friend, specially one that has worked hard in the studio over the years, but the advantages of the new style of pugmill outweigh Thelonious’s steady workhorse qualities and he is shortly going to make way for his replacement.

Thelonious – uprooted

Needless to say, it was difficult breaking the news to him and he is refusing to speak to me (as are Ziggy and Spiro) and goes around the studio with a deeply hurt look. “You’re certainly no Divine Potter”, I heard him mutter under his breath. The indignity of being sold on Ebay was also mentioned. Even the promise of a farewell party has been shrugged off with a sigh, despite the complexities involved in finding exactly the right delicacies for my strange little team: goat yoghurt, spiders and engine oil. I suspect Shimpo, the new pugmill, will be just as fastidious and will only contemplate cheeseburgers (he was born in the USA).

Shimpo – the Jimmy Cagney of pugmills

And cheeseburgers were part of the reason I drove all the way to Stoke-on-Trent, cradle of pottery in the UK. I was there to inspect and then buy Shimpo and bring him back, with the reward of a cheeseburger at one of the motorway service stations on the way back. Somehow, they taste better in a car park when you’re sitting in the car listening to the radio – there’s something vaguely illicit about it if you are not a regular burger eater.

Large rutile planter

I shall miss Thelonious and his whimsical nature. Shimpo, I can tell, is more the James Cagney of pugmills – robust, stocky, slightly aggressive, and “no nonsense”.  He just wants to get down to work, with no pussy-footing – I just hope he gets along with the others.

And finally, a plea to you all. Just as a burger is nothing unless it is eaten, a ceramic cup meaningless unless drunk from, or a song unless heard, so a story unless somebody reads it. If you have ten minutes to spare (and the inclination) please read my short story published online.

Illustrator: Evgenia Barsheva

 It is called A Summary of A Brief History of Nasocarpia, the links with Grietta Ingar and the epidemic of 2049. It is published by Lazuli Literary Group who promote otherworld realism: a genre that represents the known, often mundane world in an elevated or defamiliarizing way through the use of linguistic craft, innovative language, or experimental structure. CLICK HERE.

worm grunting

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May Hill hovering on the horizon

The fitter your legs, the fitter your mind. This is what I told myself as I slogged up Bradlow Hill to my favourite viewing spot one harsh cold morning last week. It’s good for you, colder temperatures help people think clearly, people perform tasks better. What’s more, people are less inclined to tackle cognitive problems in the summer, as opposed to winter, because the warm weather uses more glucose that’s needed for mental processes.

the slog uphill

Yes, a long, brisk walk is as good as a run when it comes to lowering risk of high blood pressure and high cholesterol because it’s the total energy used, you see, rather than the intensity of the workout, that counts.

frond vase

Encouraged, I tried tackling a cognitive problem. When did time begin? Where does a thought go when it’s forgotten? Where do lost socks go when they are missing? No answer presented itself.

hoar frost

But it was cold. Very cold. Everything was covered in wispy white and the mud, usually so slippery and just waiting to play with you, was ice solid and didn’t try any of its old tricks. I decided it was a hoar frost. Later, when I got home, I looked up “hoar” – it comes from an Old English adjective that means “showing signs of old age”. In this context, it refers to the frost that makes trees and bushes look like white hair.  It is formed by direct condensation of water vapour to ice at temperatures below freezing.

frozen worm roof

More cognitive problems: which came first – the chicken or the egg? Why do men have nipples? What would happen if somebody hired two private detectives to follow each other? At a cinema or theatre, which armrest is yours? What happens to worms when the earth above them has frozen? Just think how nice it would be to sleep curled up in a warm place, like a worm when the temperature goes down and the frost appears. They burrow below the frost line where they nest in chambers at the bottom of tunnels they dig, kept moist by the slimy mucus they produce. All that soil above them keeping them warm, like a blanket – bad news for birds, no matter how early they get up on a cold winter’s day.

do worms dream?

Do worms communicate? Do they produce any sound? My research later showed up all sorts of interesting facts, like worm grunting – which is the art of rubbing iron and wood to cause vibrations in the ground that cause worms to wriggle to the surface – but I read that earthworms do not have vocal cords, lungs or larynx to drive air through and generate noise, and why didn’t I enrol in a biology class, it was suggested, and get a life.

lobe vase

Looking around at the whitened landscape another cognitive problem came to me. What makes stoneware and porcelain white? I know this one: kaolin, or rather kaolinite, a mineral. Kaolin is the only type of clay from which a white, translucent, vitreous ceramic can be made. It is a refractory clay, meaning that it can be fired at high temperatures without deforming, and it is white-burning, meaning that it imparts whiteness to the finished ware, be it stoneware or porcelain. Ceramicists like Edmund de Waal usually like their pieces in their pure white state.

Much as I like the white of stoneware and porcelain, because I am a painter, I feel the need to colour the surface with stains and oxides before dipping the piece in a transparent glaze and firing it to 1275℃.

horn vase

By the way, it turns out that Kaolinite is also used in toothpaste, incandescent lightbulbs, cosmetics, paint, whitewash and paper.  Some people even eat it to help digestion or to lower food toxicity, but don’t try it at home.

bottom mystery

When I got to the top of the hill, I saw that someone had already beaten me to CJ’s bench and left his or her mark. In full Sherlock cognitive mode, I studied the patch left by the person’s bottom on the frosted wood: hmmm, not a large person, and very confident of the waterproof clothing worn, and given the heat required to melt the ice, I surmised the person had, like me, climbed the hill to the bench to generate such heat. Therefore, the person was ahead of me and in the woods. I decided not to test the theory. If I rushed ahead and approached walkers ahead of me whilst looking for damp patches on their bottoms I would only get into trouble.

three legged bowl 52

Instead, I looked at the low wintry skyline and noticed a thin finger of cloud below the top of May Hill, which made it look as if it were floating just above the horizon.

raven photo: www.copetersen.com

The rest of the walk through the woods was uneventful with only a few walkers crossing paths, no squirrels, no birdsong, only the neighbourhood raven who always croaks way above the trees. It made me think of Merlina, the Queen raven that recently disappeared from the Tower of London, presumed dead. It was Charles II who officially decree that the birds must be kept at the Tower at all times (otherwise the kingdom would collapse), and when numbers fell to just a single raven guard, Winston Churchill ordered that the flock — known as an “unkindness” — was increased to at least six.

Seeing the landscape beyond through the vertical grid of the trees, I was reminded of a vase I made some time ago, thus the next two pictures:

view through the trees

You may have noticed that I have taken the advice of my marketing manager, St Spyridon (see previous blog), and have scattered images of recently made vases throughout this blog in a haphazard manner unrelated to the text. He assures me it is called scattergun influencer marketing and all the kids are doing it, and why am I calling this  blog worm grunting? It’s got nothing to do with ceramics.

Brittle Star

Nor has this: some of you who read my verbiage, my waffle, my flannel, might be interested in listening to me read a section from a short story called sibling published in Brittle Star.  Please join us for the magazine’s first ever virtual launch, hosted by the Barbican Library through Zoom. Free to attend, just click here to register.  It is  the publication’s twentieth birthday, with readings by contributors strictly limited to five minutes each.  There will be no ceramics on view, no matter what Spiro says about it being a great marketing opportunity. It will be on 26th January at 6pm until 7pm (UK time).

Keep well.