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Anatomy of a fall

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The view from Bradlow Knoll at 10 am New Year’s Day

Pottery is just an excuse to play with mud. The material used is really nothing more than soil clay that has been mined. Mud is wet soil. Roll a ball of moist sediment into a thin string – if you can, it’s clay. It’s generally accepted now that playing with mud allows children to connect with the natural world around them, and helps develop tactile skills, boosts creativity and imagination. And it’s fun and therapeutic. And I think this applies to adults too. Using your hands to shape clay into a vessel is an ancient practice that is fulfilling, and whole cultures are identified by their pottery, after all it is one of the oldest and most widespread of artforms. Pots say a lot about people.

New Year’s Day, old moon.

But as you well know, when it’s been raining a lot in the countryside, mud becomes an enemy not a friend, and you have to take it into account when you go for a walk, specially up and down a hill like Bradlow Knoll. In the early morning of the first day of the New Year, the sky was clear after the rainfall of a few days – weighing the pros and cons, and mindful of my duty to my faithful blog readers and seeing a pale waning moon beckoning in a blue sky, I decided the omens were good for a climb up the hill and a first photo of this year’s view.

Walk in the woods vase

However, the problem with walking on claggy mud is that you have to keep your eyes on your feet the whole time. One small lapse of concentration and can send your legs into the air, so you try to step on the least wet bits along the edge of the path, head down and unable to appreciate the surrounding landscape. Which is tiring and frustrating, specially deep into Frith Wood where the dark tree cover keeps everything as damp as possible, though there was a wintry sun low in the sky that you could glimpse through the trees.

I was not really enjoying my New Year’s walk. The mud was not fun and therapeutic, though maybe the worms were enjoying it; in one acre of lands there can be more than a million worms, so I imagined them partying underfoot. There is a stretch towards the end of the walk that is surrounded on both sides by brambles so it’s difficult to use the drier edges of the path. It was here that my concentration strayed because the birdsong was so unexpected and loud. I was trying to identify all the various songs (mainly blackbird, robin and bluetit) when it happened.

Some doctors  believe that one of the biggest benefits of mud baths is that they can provide stress relief. Sitting in warm, soft mud can relax the muscles and soothe the mind. They are also thought to relieve stress, joint pain, rheumatoid arthritis and certain skin ailments. Some people use mud baths simply to chill out. What I found myself in face down was not a warm bath of mud but an unrelaxing cold and slimy one that did nothing for my self-esteem.

It was a slow-motion experience in three stages. First the right foot slid backwards, and I thought I’d land on my right knee (no big deal, I thought, just a muddy knee). Second, because it was slightly downhill, my upper body was leaning forward enough to propel me further, so I stuck out my right hand to stop things getting any worse (no big deal, just a muddy hand, as well as knee). Third, my right hand made contact with the mud and slid forward all the way until the whole right side of my body lay obligingly in the quagmire. This happened in less than a second, but it felt very gradual – it’s amazing what your brain can be doing in such a short time: surprise (this cannot be happening!), anger (I showered and put on clean clothes an hour ago in honour of this New Year, and now look!), indignity (God, I hope nobody’s looking!), curiosity (all the birds have suddenly stopped singing, are they having a quiet laugh? Do birds laugh? I must find out), and finally disappointment and petulance (I was being so careful all the way, it’s just not fair).

I met two dog walkers further on, at a fork in their path, and wondered whether they’d heard my expletives. They looked vaguely concerned at my state, and I had two choices: either I let them go along my path to see if they too slipped in the mud or I recommended the alternative path ahead of them. The Devil in me lost and I told them how to best avoid my fate – it was my first good deed of the year. By the time I got home the sun was out again low in the sky and cast a long shadow, reminding me that we’ve already had our shortest day (22 Dec), and that seemed to put things in proportion, so I blamed my shoes, which have no grip and are inappropriate for walks.

guilty shoes

Somewhere in the Frith Wood is the mud imprint of yours truly. It will last until the next rainfall, then dissolve back to its natural muddiness. Mud is the stuff of creation, used to create Adam, so how come it’s used to tarnish people? Mud is thrown at people in accusation, a name is dragged through it, anything dark and confusing is clear as mud, a person who resists change is a stick in the mud. But we potters know better, which is why I hold nothing against it, other than, occasionally, my body.

architectural pieces drying.

And ceramics? (It’s about time you mentioned them, says Spiro). Well, yes, the new kiln is yet to be connected, so I have been making pieces that have not been bisque fired and sit around waiting in the studio, like the ones in the image above, and the set of Yoohoo vases below.

Yoohoo vases waiting for a bisque firing

Also waiting for kiln connection and bisque firing are various figures and pieces made by visitors to the studio. The lynx pictured is a favourite.

Lynx by Lisa Dearling

And finally, and given that these blogs always seem to refer to woods and trees: a man walks into Frith Wood and tries to cut down a talking tree. “You can’t cut me down,” the tree exclaims, “I’m a talking tree!” The man responds, “You may be a talking tree, but you will dialogue.”

Goodbye 2023

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Possibly because it was a cold, grey, miserable day, my walk up Bradlow Hill and into Frith Wood was a lonely one. Not a single walker passed by, nor did I even see a squirrel, and there was no birdsong, except for the distant cawing of the resident raven. It was an unusually silent trudge along the woodland track, the whole atmosphere was brooding, possibly reinforced by the inactivity in the ceramics studio due to delays in connecting the new kiln – creative juices with no outlet can make a person very gloomy – and by the realization that the familiar whiff in our sitting room indicates a dead rat in the skirting boards. The smell is faint now, but building up to its peak for Christmas day.

Crouch vase at Cecilia Colman Gallery, London

Feeling uninspired, I turned a rock over with my foot to find what I expected to see: bugs scuttling away, mainly woodlice. “Aha!” I thought to myself, “here are the true companions of my walk today.” Just because they are not visible and make no sound does not mean they should not be respected as denizens of the wood, as much as the charismatic squirrels, foxes and birds, who have not bothered to make their presence felt; lethargic, pampered and entitled as they lie in their nests, dreys, lairs and setts for the day.

In praise of the woodlouse, the species is found across the UK in almost any habitat. They are flat, oval and grey with a thick exoskeleton and have seven body segments, each with a pair of legs. They are actually crustaceans, related to shrimps and crabs. Like their aquatic relatives they easily dry out, which is why they hide away in cool, damp places during the day and come out at night. To recycle copper in their diet (as their blood is copper based like all marine crustaceans) they eat their own poo, but they also munch away at decaying wood, leaf litter, fungi, fruit, dead animals, as well as other animals’ poo. By the way, eating your own poo is not recommended – do not do it at home.

Granny grunter

If you collect a few woodlice and keep them in a jar, try sniffing it after a while. They excrete ammonia through their exoskeletons, so it’s unpleasant, which is why they are called ‘stinky pigs’ in parts of the UK. They are also known as ‘chiggy pig’ (Devon), ‘gramersow’ (Cornwall), ‘sow bug’ and ‘woodpig’.

Flower vase at Cecilia Colman Gallery

They have 250 recorded names in the UK, including Billy Baker, Monkey pea, Parson’s pig, Cheese log, Daddy granfer, Granny grunter, Damper, Slate cutter, Hardy back, Penny sow, Cheesy bug and Nut bug. Probably names given by children, who are after all the ones closest to these things that crawl around on the ground, it’s children who find them under stones and under sticks, and who play with them.

Segment vase at Cecilia Colman Gallery, London

One insect I did not see was the mythical caterpillar, a beast so rare that only my granddaughter knows about it. It is half caterpillar and half cat – notice the sharp claws at the end of its many feet, the long tail and the feline head.

Cat/erpillar. Erin Arscott Richards

In an effort to be as fair as possible about bugs in general, I include images of two studio residents, a spider and a slug. Both are ceramic portraits, the spider a very accurate one of Ziggy, who as regular readers of this blog know, is in charge of fly-catching in the studio.

Ceramic portrait of Ziggy

Vases have been made in the studio, but they are not even bisque fired yet, until the new kiln is set up. Until then, pieces are available at various outlets, the most recent delivery being at the Cecilia Colman Gallery in London, where you can see the ceramics displayed here on the blog (At last, says Spiro, at least a gesture towards marketing).

Sam Slug

We wish you all a happy Christmas and a prosperous 2024. Here’s hoping it’s a better year for humanity than ’23. Celebrate properly, don’t waste time making mulled wine and other aberrations, go for the classic Dry Martini: Put your martini glass in the freezer, pour a good gin into a shaker, add a drop of Dry Vermouth (only a drop!) and put it in the freezer. After at least 3 hours you can take it out and pour it into the frozen glass and add an olive. The first sip is the best, hold it by the stem so your fingers won’t warm it up. Here endeth the lesson.

Blue dot vase at Cecilia Colman Gallery

A man and his pet slug walk into a bar. They start drinking beer, then as the night goes on they move to cocktails, and then to brandy.  Finally, the bartender says: “Last orders.” So, the man says, “One more for me… and one more for my slug.” The bartender sets them up and they gulp them down. Suddenly the slug falls over dead. The man puts on his coat and starts to leave. The bartender says angrily: “Hey, you can’t just leave that lyin’ there.” The man replies: “That’s not a lion, that’s a slug.

Cheers, and a Happy 2024

Swimming, eating, drinking.

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Cala Aigua Xellida

Apologies to those of you expecting the usual image of Ledbury from Bradlow Hill. We’ve been away, you see. A gathering of the clan took place this month in the small town of Tamariu on the Costa Brava. The nearest anyone got to trudging up Bradlow Hill was getting down to Cala Xellida and back, which was done by car anyway – it was a holiday after all. It consisted of swimming early in the morning in this beautiful little bay, consorting with octopuses and watching cormorants diving alongside, or simply floating on your back (like a pale plump starfish on an azure sea) mindful of not brushing up against a sea urchin – one of their sharp needles in a vulnerable spot would spoil the day. I thought the sea urchin was a friend, but it was anemone.

Paracentrotus livides profil. Photo Frédéric Ducarme

The name Tamariu derives from the tamarisk trees along the promenade, which separates the beach from the narrow streets and whitewashed buildings of the town. It was, like most settlements along the Costa Brava, a small fishing village, and fishing boats are still to be seen up on the beach. Nowadays there are a few hotels, along with seafood restaurants, cafes and bars. It is set amongst rugged pine-covered cliffs flanking the sea.

View from the coastal path flanking Tamariu.

A few days beforehand, we had stayed with friends in a small village outside Vic, the ancient capital of the region of Osona. Set among lush green hills, from here you can see in the distance the highest peaks of the Pyrenees that border with France. The main square, where most of the town’s social and cultural life takes place, is a large square area surrounded on all sides by beautiful old buildings, some dating from the late 14th century.

Plaza Mayor, Vic.

Whilst there, a trip uphill to the hermitage of Sant Sebastiá, long abandoned. It stands as a reminder of Albion’s perfidy and of the ongoing struggle for Catalan independence because it was here that the decision was taken to send an emissary to the British, which led to an agreement of support in 1705 during the war of Spanish Succession. Alas, Britain let them down by signing the Treaty of Utrech in 1713. Long story, with little obvious link to ceramics, but complex and interesting. Great views of the valley below.

View of Vic valley from Sant Sebastiá.

Catalans and ceramics? Yes. The best-known source of pottery is La Bisbal which has been producing pots for centuries, and uses the typical blue, red and yellow tones associated with it in the numerous artisan studios along the town’s main drag. But pottery here is also associated with the great names of Catalan art: Gaudí, Miró, Dalí and, though born in Malaga, Picasso.

Ceramic seating in Parc Guell – Antoni Gaudí

Of the four, Gaudí did not actually make any ceramics, rather he smashed them up and incorporated it into his facades and rounded architecture, as can be seen on the benches in Parc Guell where one can sit and look down on the city of Barcelona.

Suite Catalan – Salvador Dalí

In 1976 Dali was seeking a buyer for a collection of tiles known as the Suite Catalan that he had produced in Spain two decades previously. From the original run of 100,000 tiles 60,000 remained. A German lawyer bought them all. The remaining tiles from the original run have sold in private sales and auctions over the years, fetching as much as $2,300 for a set of six, and over €500 for just one.

Earthenware dish with bird – Picasso

Picasso and Miró are better known than the other two for their ceramic work and made extraordinary pieces which nowadays are seen in museums around the world. Picasso moved to Barcelona with his family at 13, in 1895, when the city was full of political and artistic ferment. It was politics that turned his visits to Paris into permanent French exile, but before that, his artistic early artistic formation developed in Barcelona. His Blue Period is Catalan.

Oiseau (Solar) bird – Fundació Joan Miró

Peter Arscott Ceramics would like to emulate them one day and, in a fit of creativity, inspiration has nudged this piece out of the studio.

Doodle vase by PAC

These few days on the Mediterranean were not only about swimming, eating, and drinking. Oh no. There was a quick cultural visit to Gerona.  We wanted to see the cathedral’s interior, which includes the widest Gothic nave in the world, with a width of 23 metres (75 ft), and the second widest of any church after that of St Peter’s Basilica. When we finally made it, the huge West door was being shut to visitors by a stern-faced porter.

Closing time at Gerona cathedral

Defeated in our cultural pursuits, we could only drown our sorrows with more food and drink. Here is a picture of tapas: anchovies and olives.

Tapas

In deference to the octopus we met daily at Aigua Xellida (there may have been two, but if so, they were hard to tell apart; they were i-tentacle), we tried not to eat any cephalopods. But we did eat fish, and many sausages along with barbecued red peppers and aubergines, and a lot of cheese and ham eaten on local bread rubbed with tomato. And more sausages. They know their food, those Catalans.

Salchichón de Vic

Back home, and the call of the clay was loud and enticing, tempting hands into making new shapes and forms, and perhaps influenced by the happy use of colour in the pots and dishes seen in La Bisbal, an orange-red tone crept into one of the more devilish vases that popped out of the kiln today.

Imp vase

Enjoy the rest of Summer.

Someone to watch over me

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Do you ever get that feeling that someone is behind you, staring? A sort of ghostly or alien presence nearby, that you slowly become aware of and makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and your spine tingle? This happens at the studio very now and then, and probably as a result of the loneliness of the long-distance potter (see blog May), but more likely the result of having a ceramic custodian placed in the workshop high on a shelf, and then forgetting that it is there.

Norma

Our custodian is called Norma. She is imperiously “above it all”, dispassionate and detached, somewhat poker-faced, but commanding and reassuring as she protects the studio from any malevolent spirits. She is not a conversationalist. St Spyridon, or Spiro as we call him, the patron saint of potters, is no good at warding off the malignant because he is too busy with the marketing, and in any case considers such practices as beneath his dignity. However, unlike Norma, he does like to chat.

Frank

It’s natural to assume someone behind us is staring, but I think that feeling we get is a self-fulfilling because when we turn around, our action makes the other person look at us, and when they meet our eyes, they give us the impression that they’ve been staring the whole time. Norma – she is inscrutably mute and thus easily forgotten, until, for no particular reason, you become aware of her presence.

Hugo

In the garden, once Spring arrives and everything starts growing and covering every inch of space with leaves, blossom, buds, stalks, and branches, you forget what was standing visibly throughout the bare Winter months. Indulging in a bit of pruning, you uncover a patch that reveals an old garden sentinel that stares back at you – something familiar that takes you by surprise. In this case Hugo and Frank, who are stylised skulls made as part of a mural commissioned years ago and who were rejected on account of flaws detected – cracks, I think. They still look at one forlornly, even accusingly.

Forsaken

In fact, the garden is full of forsaken ceramics. They peek out at me or make sarcastic comments as I go by: “Call yourself a potter? Didn’t you know that stoneware contains (among other silicates) feldspar, and that this majestic mineral is by far the most abundant in the Earth’s crust, making up about 50% of all rocks? I contain eternity, I’m as old as the planet, and yet…and yet…you cast me out and abandon me in this squalor, surrounded by weeds, mud and (ugh) ants that crawl over me. Have you no respect?”

Forlorn

Tables, on the other hand, being made of wood, suffer from no illusions and stand squarely on the earth’s surface, four-legged and robust, and in the case of these two that are now at the Palais des Vaches, looking quite elegant. Their hand-painted tops are varnished with a heat-resistant resin, so that hot cups of tea or coffee can be placed on them directly without the need for a coaster. Their tapering “sputnik” legs give them a fifties look.

Fifties vibe – handmade table at the Palais des Vaches

These tables are not for the outdoors, but for the house. And in the house, we have another sentinel that watches over us. He is tucked up in a corner of the kitchen ceiling and has been there uncomplaining for over thirty years, though he has been with the family for forty.  Three-fingered and four-toed, he is made of plaster and is named Garrel because the kids could not pronounce the word “gargoyle”, though strictly speaking gargoyles are meant to stand on roofs and act as waterspouts, as well as warding off evil spirits.

Garrel

Derivation of the word “gargoyle”? From Middle English: from Old French gargouille ‘throat’, also ‘gargoyle’ (because of the water passing through the throat and mouth of the figure); related to Greek gargarizein ‘to gargle’ (imitating the sounds made in the throat).

Jug vase

Spiro says that’s enough wittering on my part and reminds me that this is a ceramics blog, not some etymology lesson, and that I should at least show something recently made. So here it is – above is a large stoneware vase that looks like a jug from a certain angle. And here’s another table…

Do you want to listen to the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald singing Gershwin’s “Someone to watch over me“? Click here.

There’s a somebody I’m longin’ to seeI hope that he turns out to beSomeone who’ll watch over me

Sorry, I couldn’t resist this one:

A man goes into a bar with his small pet newt called Tiny. “A pint for me and a half for Tiny, please,” he says to the landlord.
The landlord asks, “Why do you name him Tiny?”
The man replies, “Because he’s my newt.”

Adeus, Astrud.

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In what has become customary in this blog, I was yet again talking to a fruit the other day – this time an avocado. And, yes, it IS a fruit. They are considered so because they fit all of the botanical criteria for a berry. They have a fleshy pulp and a seed. This particular avocado was in mourning over the passing away of one of its fellow South Americans, the dreamy-voiced bossa nova singer Astrud Gilberto.

What has bossa nova got to do with ceramics? Not much. It’s just that her voice, for those of us who were around then, played such a defining part of the mid-sixties. At the time of her recording of the “Girl from Ipanema”, although she had little time to prepare (she had never sung professionally before), her detached but sultry vocals perfectly captured the spirit of a “tall and tan and young and lovely” girl who turns the heads of everyone she passes. Her husband, the guitarist Joao Gilberto, was recording with the jazz saxophonist Stan Getz when they decided they needed someone to sing the song in English, and since Joao spoke not a word, she volunteered.

Astrud Gilberto – Kroon, Ron / Anefo photo

She wasn’t credited on the track (which was released under the name Stan Getz and João Gilberto) and she only received the standard $120 session fee for her performance, whereas Stan went on to buy a 23-bed mansion outside New York. But her career took off and she sang with the likes of Antonio Carlos Jobim, Frank Sinatra, George Michael, and Chet Baker. We like listening to her cool-as-a-cucumber, slightly diffident voice here in the studio – her singing entwining with Stan Getz’s smooth saxophone calms the atmosphere. Adeus, Astrud. Click here to hear her sing How Insensitive (Insensatez)– she is slightly hesitant, even insecure, in her delivery, probably because of her limited English, but it makes the song all the sadder.

Avocados (persea americana) are popular with ceramicists who enjoy playing with the colours and the shape to create bowls for tableware, and it was the hippest shade of green for your ceramic bathrooms in the 1970s.

Something else that is becoming popular with some ceramicists is the Japanese art of Kintsugi (Golden joinery), whereby broken pottery is mended with lacquer dusted with powdered gold or silver, treating the breakage as part of the history of an object, rather than disguising it. Nowadays potters can buy tubes of ready-made golden glue that hardens at 300F, and no doubt many have pounced on it as a way of salvaging work that might still be sellable.

Kintsugi hoot vase. Notice the vertical golden crack in the green/blue area.

Yours truly is no exception, and the large piece that cracked in the kiln as described in May’s blog was brought out and repaired. However, there were too many cracks to make it watertight, and though it looks good with its golden fissure unashamedly exhibited to all eyes, it sounds dull when you tap the vase with your knuckles. A horrible sound to all potters, and a death knell to a pot. It certainly can’t be sold and will probably live outside in the garden where it might scare away the mice, though the resident barn owl might get confused. I think I will call it Astrud, which means “energetic, courageous and determined”. I made another similar one, which came out of the kiln in perfect condition.

“Call of the Nightingale recorded over eighty-six seconds” 145 x 180 cms. Nicky Arscott 2023.

Owls are not the only nocturnal birds, of course. So is the nightingale, which sings its heart out in the dead of night to attract passing females migrating back to Britain. Last year I told you about our midnight walk with Sam Lee in a wood near Gloucester and I remember him telling us that if you hear one still singing at the end of Spring, that means he didn’t get the girl and he’ll be a summer bachelor. Sam will be reading from his book “Nightingale” and singing (he is a Mercury award-winning singer) at the Ledbury Poetry Festival on Sunday 2 July, so if you’d like to buy a ticket please click here.

Detail of “Nightingale..” by Nicky Arscott.

I am sure I’ve told you before that all the PAC pieces are stoneware, and that they are glaze-fired to 1200°C. Until now, every piece is dipped in a tub of liquid glaze, or, if too big, has the glaze poured over it. This means you don’t get uniform coverage but inevitable thicker and thinner areas of glaze on the surfaces – which is attractive and accentuates the “handmade” aspect of production.

However, using an air compressor and a recently purchased spray gun, goggles, a mask, and a rickety spray booth made out of a large cardboard box on an abandoned garden table, and finally a coverall that was disappointingly tight around middle, two pieces were glaze-sprayed and came out of the kiln with a lovely sheen. Breathing in glaze is strictly to be avoided, you see – thus all the safety preliminaries.

nice sheen

All this is just another example of how far we go to make things pleasing to others. It’s only a few steps away from exerting a pull by creating something irresistible and beautiful like the nightingale desperately attracting a mate, or Astrud singing about regret, or even an owl hooting in the night. Even potters do it, albeit subliminally.

two hoots

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.

The Madding Crowds

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Photo by Rob Curran on Unsplash

Peter Arscott Ceramics paid a quick visit to London a few weeks ago, in order to go to some exhibitions. Walking from gallery to gallery was as demanding as climbing Bradlow Hill, not because of any steep incline but because of the number of people out and about in the capital. – wall-to-wall human flesh, where even on the pavements one had to stop and queue simply to keep going along the same trajectory.

“Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learned to stray; Along the cool sequestered vale of life They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.” Thomas Gray. The view from Bradlow Knoll on Boxing Day

A walk along the South Bank to Borough Market for a bit of street food was a marathon, and once in the market area, the queues in front of each little kiosk (the paella queue being the longest) snaked and coiled around each other and made progress almost impossible. This is not a complaint, by the way, simply an observation – everybody was very relaxed and easy-going, and the atmosphere in the city was memorably positive and friendly.

The first exhibition was Strange Clay: Ceramics in Contemporary Art at the Hayward Gallery (until 8th January, so hurry), featuring artists working across recent decades, and examining the plasticity and the possibilities of ceramics, often in a defamiliarized way. Weird and wonderful, ranging from small abstract works to large-scale installations that make you wonder how the artists managed to accomplish their work. If you ever wonder what clay can do, this is for you.

Architeuthis by Zinc Yi

David Zink Yi (Lima, Peru) has somehow created a giant squid (5 metres) lying in a pool of its own ink. To achieve the slick-looking flesh he has glazed the piece with a mix of different oxides. An animal we only ever encounter dead on our shores, there is something impressive but sad about this Architeuthis on the gallery floor. Insider info: the “ink” was made by mixing maple syrup with black ink, and acts as a barrier – somebody kicked and broke one of its legs at a previous exhibition, and this is the clever solution.

Brie Ruais

Brie Ruais (USA) draws inspiration for her large wall pieces from the desert landscapes of the Southwest of the United States. She sees similarities between the body and the land since they both bear scars as a record of trauma, the latter as a result of human intervention and extraction in the region.

Betty Woodman

Betty Woodman’s wall piece (USA, d. 2018) made of many separate ingredients that come together to create movement, colour, and space, is typical of her. Many years ago, she started to create an untroubled and friendly world for ceramics that had never previously existed, and her pieces were often set out in the lobby of galleries with flowers in them, offering visitors a warm welcome. She would throw her pieces on the wheel, but played with them afterwards, twisting, stretching, and cutting shapes, I think, without much forward planning, which gives her work such freshness.

Woody de Othello

Woody de Othello makes vases and jugs that incorporate human body parts such as arms, hands, lips and feet. The exaggerated proportions and the vivid hues of his sculptures reflect his Haitian ancestry and Yoruba culture. They are quite funny too.

Grayson Perry

Of course, Grayson Perry (now a “Sir”) is there with his beautifully made vases – he is a coiler par excellence – and so are many more artists proving the flexibility of clay as an art material.

A walk to the Tate Modern followed, and a visit to the Cezanne exhibition (fabulous collection of his work on show), and also Maria Bartuszová work which is based on plaster casting using gravitational pull or her own breath to make serenely white and delicate works.

Twins (1909) by Marianne Werefkin

Then off to the Royal Academy for a look at “Making Modernism” (on until 12 February) which brings together the work of seven German women artists active in the early twentieth century.

Mother cradling dead child (charcoal) by Käthe Kolwitz

Kathe Kollwitz is the best known, but the others, who achieved success in their day, are, until now, largely forgotten thanks to the Kinder, Küche, Kirche philosophy coming back to the fore.

Portrait of a boy (Willi Blab) by Gabriele Münter

Peter Arscott Ceramics will be included in an exhibition of Oxmarket Open winners in Chichester from 14th to 26th of February. If you pay it a visit, the town has plenty to offer – click here for a previous blog about it.

As you have undoubtedly picked up, 14th February is St Valentine’s, patron saint of beekeepers, asthmatics, and lovers, though St Spyridon (Patron saint of potters and in charge of Marketing at PAC) claims he is a fabrication, “like St Philomena, and St Veronica, and St Eustice”, he says dismissively.

And thanks to those of you who got in touch with your reactions to my story in Litro magazine in the last blog. It’s good to hear your thoughts, mostly positive and some constructively critical, and I appreciate them all. Here is another one called Cornelius Radhopper, which is published in Azure, a Journal of Literary Thought. It specializes in other-worldly realism, a genre that represents the known, often mundane, world in an elevated or defamiliarising way. To read it, click here.

November fauna – where have all the bunnies gone?

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Dull morning on Bradlow Knoll

There is admittedly no obvious connection between jellyfish, numbats and ceramics, but walking up Bradlow Hill on a mild and misty morning, with no sightings of any fauna, not even sheep, any imagination can get carried away and a yearning for the exotic can take over when the landscape starts turning into a monochrome dun colour. The only thing that caught my eye was a large parasol mushroom.

Parasol

Talking to the local butcher about rabbit (there was one for sale on display) it was a surprise to find out that there are no longer the numbers that existed only ten years ago. Travelling by train used to guarantee fields and meadows with bunnies running along the hedgerows. The main reason for this change is Rabbit Haemorrhagic Disease 2, or RHD 2, a disease with a mortality rate of over 90% which has all but wiped out wild rabbit populations across Europe.

Red and black vase at Cecilia Colman Gallery

Scientists, researchers and conservationists from across the UK have announced in the latest State of Nature report that the nation’s wildlife is continuing to decline despite efforts to reverse these trends. In fact, since the 1970s, it has been shown that 41% of all UK species studied have declined. This, plus the impending recession that will soon be upon us, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the sports-washing about to take place in Qatar, is all very depressing – so anything is welcome that takes one’s mind off the issues.

Nevertheless, a cute little numbat was not expected to suddenly pop out from behind a hedge in Frith Wood, but nevertheless, a rabbit or two surely could have made an appearance. Why all this stuff about numbats, you ask?

Well, celebrations and events in November are numerous, but one in particular I know you will be upset you’ve missed is not the Day of the Dead, or Guy Fawkes Night (5th Nov), or even the FIFA World Cup, but November 6th, which is World Numbat Day. It is an insectivorous marsupial which only eats termites. This furry little Australian is an endangered species. The first ever drawing of a Numbat is by George Fletcher Moore who drew it in his diary on 22 September 1831, after seeing one of the animals for the first time during an expedition.

And World Jellyfish Day (3rd November)! Yes, a day to appreciate and celebrate jellyfish, which are not, in fact, fish or made of jelly. They have no heart or brain (yes, yes, I am sure we can all think of someone who fits the description), but nevertheless, do quite well stunning their prey with their stinging tentacles and gobbling them up. Some are quite beautiful, so here’s a link to a video of jellyfish that will help you relax.

Where would anyone go to see such exotic animals? Luckily, if you live in London, you can visit Regent’s Zoo and spend time admiring your fellow creatures there. Warthogs, pigmy hippos, okapis, lemurs, hummingbirds, butterflies, and once you’re satiated with wonder, what to do?

Autumn vase at Cecilia Colman Gallery

Why, only a stone’s throw from the zoo is the Cecilia Colman Gallery where you can continue your immersion in the sublime and extraordinary by gazing at the handmade pieces on offer, including vases by Peter Arscott Ceramics.

Green Red vase at Cecilia Colman Gallery

The gallery, which was opened in 1977 in what was then a sleepy High Street in St. Johns Wood, is today part of a bustling cosmopolitan centre, and one of the few places still remaining from the 1970s.

Matisse vase at Cecilia Colman Gallery

One of the pieces is a Matisse vase. Totally inspired by Matisse’s painting, Red Interior, with bold red and green colours applied with confident brushstrokes depicting an interior with glimpses of a garden outside. A stoneware vase, like all of them, slab-rolled and glaze-fired at a temperature of 1275°. Click here if you want a glimpse of the painting – copyright rightly prevents its inclusion in this blog.

Wavy vase at Cecilia Colman Gallery – tomatoes not included.

Spiro (Head of Marketing) says: “You may think that doing any Christmas shopping in November is too early, but it does help retailers and it means less stress as the pre-Christmas frenzy builds up into its seasonal crescendo in December. Furthermore, a visit to the gallery allows you the opportunity to buy that handmade one-off gift for that special person – namely you”.

Since this is an animal-heavy blog, it’s worth knowing that Matisse was an animal lover, and that he was devoted to his three feline companions named Cousi, Minouche, and La Puce. He is even said to have fed his cats brioche bread every morning. Matisse, also a lover of birds, had pet doves, which he purchased from vendors along the Seine.

Au revoir.

 

Mythical Kings and Iguanas

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Looking down towards Ledbury and the countryside beyond, on a bright Autumn morning when nobody is about, and the serene landscape looks like it would rather just stay in bed and wait for next Spring, it is hard to believe anything momentous has ever taken place in such a pastoral setting, until you picture Caratacus fighting the Romans at British Camp in the first century AD, or the Battle of Ledbury in 1645, or you acknowledge the influential legacy of the Dymock poets and John Masefield, or the music of Elgar, or you remember the bold but unsuccessful experiment of the Chartist settlement of 1848. All this in such a small patch of land.

Slanting light

I know this is a ceramics blog, dear Reader, but Man’s capacity to do good and bad is in the news, the latter tendency reinforced in your mind as you enter Frith wood and imagine Nature fierce in tooth and claw: ferrets killing fledglings, foxes eating rabbits, badgers snacking on frogs. On the other hand, bees and ants are pretty good at organising societies and generally minding their own. Just like the Chartists.

A Chartist riot. Engraving by Alfred Pearse

However, unlike ants, bees and other insects, the Chartists focused on the six points of the People’s Charter, which aimed to introduce universal male franchise (at a time when perhaps only one-fifth of adult males had the vote – essentially those drawn from the upper and middle classes) and a more equitable and democratic political system.

The River Severn at Newtown

 

Yes, the Chartists provide us with the ceramic link for this blog, because not only did they experiment with their settlement near Ledbury, but rose in protest at Newtown, Wales, in 1839, which is where Peter Arscott Ceramics can be seen at the Oriel Davis Gallery.

Robert Owen memorial at Newtown

Newtown is the birthplace of a remarkable man. Robert Owen was a self-made man, reformer, philanthropist, community builder who spent his life seeking to improve the lives of the working class. He improved working conditions for factory workers, which he demonstrated at New Lanark, Scotland, became a leader in trade unionism, promoted social equality through his experimental Utopian communities, and supported the passage of child labour laws and free education for children, as well as advocating for an eight-hour day. His principles became the basis for Britain’s Co-operative shops, some of which continue trading in altered forms to this day. There is a museum dedicated to his life in the town.

Karl Mark, photo by John Mayall

Owen was a “Utopian Socialist”, as Marx and Engels called him. They argued that his plan, to create a model socialist utopia, was insufficient to create a new society. In their view, it was utopian because the overthrow of the capitalist system could only occur once the working class was organized into a revolutionary socialist political party that was completely independent of all capitalist class influence. Anyway, I’ve always wanted to insert Marx’s image into this blog, so here goes.

Ochre puzzle vase at Oriel Davis

Spiro (in charge of Marketing and Communications) says “too much history! Enough!”, so back to Frith Wood, albeit briefly. There was a golden light slanting in through the trees and the fallen leaves provided a carpet of gold, green, purple and ochre colours to walk on. Other than that, there was no flora to see except the occasional scattering of Hypholoma fasciculare, commonly known as the sulphur tuft or clustered wood lover, a common woodland mushroom, often in evidence when hardly any other mushrooms are to be found.

The dreaded sulphur tuft

The sulphur tuft grows prolifically in large clumps on stumps, dead roots or rotting trunks of broadleaved trees. It looks inviting enough, but is treacherous, bitter and poisonous, and consuming it can cause vomiting, diarrhoea and convulsions. In contrast, a lovely feeling of serenity, peace and general satisfaction will envelop you when you visit the Oriel Davies Gallery. It is a key public art gallery of Wales, presenting world-class, thought-provoking and challenging art by national and international artists in an environment that is welcoming (and free). Its shop sells Peter Arscott ceramics, and it has a good café too.

Big spot vase at Oriel Davis

On arrival to deliver the ceramics, there was a busker singing in the town centre. Unusually, because it’s nearly always Bob Dylan, the Beatles or Leonard Cohen, this lady was singing Dory Previn’s Mythical Kings and Iguanas, a song that might take your mind back if you are of a certain age. As far as I know, Dory has no connections to Newtown (she was born in New Jersey) but listen to her on the Old Grey Whistle Test by clicking here.

Wobble grid vase at Oriel Davis.

Spiro says that not one of the team at Peter Arscott Ceramics has ever flown to star-stained heights on bend and battered wings, like Dory. But Spiro, being a third century Bishop of Trimythous, is somewhat literal in his interpretations and there is no way he understands metaphor or allegory, though ironically, Thelonious, perhaps because he is a heavy cast iron and earth-bound pugmill, understands fully. He has the heart of a poet.

Small garden vase at Oriel Davis

song of the nightingale, buzz of the fly

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May view of Ledbury

A celebratory walk was needed after a successful glaze firing. The view from Bradlow Knoll down towards Ledbury this May afternoon was grey and cloudy. You can see in the distance the white shapes of the plastic used in the speeded-up cultivation of strawberries for the voracious soft fruit market, and, nearer, the sheep  which will end up on our dinner plates. Land maintained and exploited for the consumer’s benefit, which has made our landscape what it is today. This applies to Frith Wood as well, where dead trees are removed or left on the ground to encourage wildlife. This tree was 57 years old – I counted the rings.

A well-maintained wood.

It clouded over very quickly and started to rain, so it was dark walking in the wood, and there was little birdsong. However, it was not as dark as a few weeks ago when my daughter and I found ourselves with thirty others tiptoeing through Highnam Woods near Gloucester at midnight.

A walk through the woods at night vase

 It was pitch black. Not a sound could we make, no squeaky shoes allowed, or noisy clothing, no flashlights to be used, only the vague shape of the person in front to guide each of us in single file until we came to a small clearing and very carefully sat down. We had previously gathered around a campfire to eat, drink and listen to the environmentalist Sam Lee, who was leading us into the trees with one purpose only: to listen to a nightingale sing.

Nightingale. Photo: Carlos Delgado

Unlike the continent, the UK is seeing the slow disappearance of the bird, due to farming and land management activity, but primarily to the lack of thoughtfully maintained woods like Highnam, which is owned by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and is a jewel, a remnant of ancient woodland that is carefully managed in order to keep a balance between mature trees and traditional coppice.

Doodle vase just out of the kiln.

Our nightingale sang his heart out, though not for us. Only male birds sing at night, in order to woo the females – if you hear one still singing at the end of Spring, that means he didn’t get the girl and he’ll be a Summer bachelor. Ours was a Pavarotti, with the most amazing technique, and the sound was clean and clear and strangely affecting. Click here to listen, and if you are interested in going on a Nightingale Walk next Spring, have a look at the Nest Collective website here.

Posture vase

From beautiful sounds to irritating ones: is it me, or are the flies out early this year?

They keep zooming into the studio uninvited, hurling themselves against the windowpanes again and again, and buzzing at a particular pitch that keeps you from concentrating. Eventually you spend too much time trying to swat them, unsuccessfully, and getting more and more frenzied and unfocused.

Fl-eye view

Like most people, I know flies have those compound eyes which allow them to see what’s coming towards them no matter at what angle or speed, so that by the time they’ve swerved the blow of a rolled-up newspaper, they’ve had time to read the print. Ok, so flies are important pollinators, second only to the bees, but house flies, commensal with humans all over the world, spread food-borne illnesses. And they are an annoyance especially in some parts of the world where they can occur in large numbers, buzzing and settling on the skin or eyes. Did you know, and I’ve looked this up, that the fly’s taste receptors are in the labium, pharynx, feet, wing margins and female genitalia, thus enabling it to taste your food by walking on it?

Research on your behalf also uncovered this: the Sardinian cheese casu martzu is exposed to flies so that the digestive activities of the fly larvae soften the cheese and modify the aroma as part of the process of maturation. Banned by the European Union, the cheese was hard to find, but the ban has been lifted on the grounds that the cheese is a traditional local product made by traditional methods.  And why not? The sustainable food of the future is the insect.

Swat vase

Do flies, do insects, have much to do with the history and development of ceramics? Not as far as I know, this is just another long and rambling lead-in to my latest batch of vases out of the kiln. I think you’ll agree that the piece above has been influenced by fly-swatting.

Hello vase

From bird song to buzzing to mooing: more PCA ceramics at the Palais des Vaches in Exbury, where you can also see a unique coffee table made with tapering beech legs, the top being sealed, and hand painted with acrylics. Three layers of heat-resistant varnish ensure that hot mugs of coffee will not mark the surface, though coasters are recommended. The surface is easy to clean.  It could be described as a horizontal painting on four legs, and certainly you get a lot of pleasure from simply looking down on it and enjoying the colours

Unique PAC hand-painted table at the Palais des Vaches

Other work at the Palais includes this large sculptural piece:

Porthole vase

And to finish, a poem from childhood:

“Will you walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly,
“‘Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I have many curious things to show when you are there.”
“Oh no, no,” said the little Fly, “to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.” (Mary Howitt)

Ruby my Dear vase at the Coastal Gallery

Well, I couldn’t resist finishing off with John Keats:

“Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!”