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Scorcher

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The mystery of splitting or cracking flat circular pieces emerging from the kiln continues, despite much consultation with experts. This last attempt was with highly-grogged stoneware, which is designed to strengthen any handmade slab-rolled piece. It dried slowly over a month before it was put in for a bisque firing (very slowly) to 1000 ℃. It came out with a hairline fracture, then glaze-fired to 1200 ℃, during which it split in two.

If anybody has an idea to solve this problem please get in touch. Very annoying. Spyro and I took out our frustration by chasing Ziggy with a fly swat but he managed to squeeze through a crack in the wall and got away. In need of clarity and tranquillity, I decided to walk up to Bradlow Knoll.

Common blue

On my way up the hill I came across these butterflies – they are relaxing to watch and gladden the heart so I took a photo of the little cold-blooded critters as they happily thermoregulated. It has been suggested that people in the middle ages believed that butterflies stole milk and butter – thus the name. Or they could be named for the colour of their poo, since Old Dutch used the term “boterschijte”. In Russia, they are called babochka, which translates as “little soul”, and in France, they are known as papillon, in Spanish, mariposa, in Portuguese, borboleta, and in German, Schmetterling, “little cream thing”.

Painted Lady

It’s been a year for the ox-eye daisies, which have sprung up all over the place this Spring. There’s a cluster right next to CJ’s bench. I did know that the name “daisy” comes from the Old English word dægeseage, which translates as “day’s eye”, a name given to the flower because of its habit of opening its petals at dawn and closing them at dusk, but I did not know that, as a popular choice for pulling its petals apart by the lovelorn, the world’s largest game of “he loves me, he loves me not” took place in Milan in 2009 when a total of 331 people participated.

Ox-eye daisies

It is also a nickname for Margaret, going back centuries when English speakers used the nickname because Marguerite (the French version of Margaret) is also the French word for the ox-eye daisy. Its’s also known as dog daisy, field daisy, moon daisy, moon-penny, poor-land penny, poverty daisy and white daisy. The unopened flower buds can be marinated and used in a similar way to capers. The most famous Daisy I can think of is Daisy Buchanan, the beautiful and alluring socialite from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby, played by Carey Mulligan, Mira Sorvino and Mia Farrow, among others.

Palais des Vaches

And what about Daisy the Cow? Surely one of the most frequently used names for lady bovines, a familiar British cultural stereotype and often present in nursery rhymes. I will bet my bottom dollar that the old milking parlour on the Exbury estate once had a “Daisy” using its facilities, facilities now enjoyed by gallery-goers visiting the Palais des Vaches gallery in the New Forest, near the Beaulieu River and a stone’s throw from the Solent coast and the famous Exbury Gardens. A great place to go and see Peter Arscott ceramics, now on display at the gallery, along with painting, sculpture and jewellery by other artists.

Still life vase at the Palais des caches

Luckily, I walked up Bradlow Knoll just before the four-day amber weather warning for extreme heat, with forecasts suggesting temperatures could reach 38C (100F) in parts of England this week. The warning means population-wide impacts are likely. It’s worse in Paris because their roofs are all made of zinc so they’re all making crepe suzettes on them. At the Peter Arscott Ceramics (PAC) workshop, conditions will be hot so I shall be wearing an apron only, and Spyro will only have on his bishop’s mitre. At the football World Cup they’re having quarterly hydration breaks during the games, elsewhere, drinking alcohol has been banned in public, large gatherings for football screenings cancelled and sales of electric fans have gone through the roof.

Blue juggler vase at the Palais Des Vaches

Yes, making ceramics is dangerous: bisque firing, as some of you know, is at 1000 degrees centigrade. At this point many common metals melt. Aluminium liquefies around 660°C and silver at 961.8°C.  Structural steel loses about 90% of its structural strength at 1000°C, though it doesn’t fully melt until about 1500°C. But it is the baseline heat required for heating kilns for refining glass and, of course, ceramics.

Small person’s boot waiting for its owner near CJ’s bench on Bradlow Knoll

In the meantime, stay cool yourselves. In Paris the authorities have opened up a stretch of the Seine for bathing, over here the Wye river would be fine except that it’s full of pollution due to the chicken farms that work along the banks. The next best thing is to dip a t-shirt in water , rinse it out and wear it. Or you can do the same with a sheet and hang it over your open door – it will cool the air as it wafts into the house. Drink lots of water, avoid alcohol. Draw all curtains. Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, silence the pianos … er, sorry, we went all “Audenesque” there, but then there is the Ledbury Poetry Festival about to start.



	September meander				
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Exbury Gardens


There is a hint of autumn in the air, but only a hint. Looking down on Ledbury from Bradlow Knoll, the view still offers the usual subtle variation of greens with only a tinge of autumnal orange, though large spiders have started to move into the house and studio, always an indication of colder days ahead, and much to the annoyance of Ziggy, whose insecurities make him prey to anxiety and aggression at the sight of anything he sees as competition in his role as the studio’s “Flycatcher-in-chief”.


Autumn leaf zephyr vase @ Palais des Vaches


Flies are also on the move come autumn. They choose to fly high before the weather gets too cold and enter attics and lofts for the winter. No matter how well the space is sealed, they somehow manage to get in, so that when you visit the loft in spring the whole place is buzzing with blowflies trying to find a way out, presumably having bred throughout Winter. So, all power to the spider, and to anything else that eats them, like fish. Yes, fish, specially trout, are partial to fly, as is the chub – all this came to mind after a walk along the River Leadon.


River Leadon – Chub don’t mind mud


The sad state of the river was highlighted in a blog last September (click here), so it merited another visit. It is good to report an obvious improvement, not least because fish are back, including chub, which can sometimes be seen swimming near the surface of rivers and streams, often in large shoals. One was caught, and then returned – a good indication of better water quality, though there are two outlets pouring into the river that seem to contain some oily substance.  As they grow, chub become aggressive predators, eating fish, frogs and even small mammals. Hard to believe when you look at the little chap in the photo.


the predatory chub


He or she must be one of the 90,000 roach, chub, and dace fish that have been added to replace those killed by pollution in 2016, when 100 tonnes of digestate were pumped onto a field and flowed into the Preston Brook, which in turn flows into the river Leadon, and more than 15,200 fish were killed in what was described as “one of the worst watercourse pollution incidents in Herefordshire in recent memory”. The new fish were all hatched and reared at the Environment Agency’s national fish farm at Calverton in Nottinghamshire, which is funded by the proceeds of fishing rod licence sales.


Autumn swirl charger @ Palais des Vaches


There are almost 1500 river systems, comprising over 200,000 km of watercourses in the UK but, in a global context, our rivers are mere streams – being characteristically short, shallow and subject to considerable man-made disturbance, as we know from recent news about water companies releasing sewage and other waste whenever the system is deluged after rainfall (Rain? In the UK? Get away and stap me vitals!).


Autumn vase @ Palais des Vaches


One of these rivers is the Beaulieu River in the New Forest, which rises near Lyndhurst and flows into the Solent, passing through the beautiful gardens at Exbury. More than 100 years in the making, these gardens, designed and curated by the Rothschild family, have a spectacular collection of landscaped woodland, herbaceous, contemporary, formal and wildflower gardens.


Autumn Reds vase


Now, dear reader, as you probably know, a “meander” is a small winding river or stream, and, as a verb, can be used to describe a winding or intricate course suggestive of aimless wandering. Which is what I have done in order to get to this point. The Exbury estate, through which the river passes, also has the Palais des Vaches gallery, a former milking shed now transformed into a strikingly handsome gallery and show area. No thumb-twiddlers, the Rothschilds planned and rebuilt it during the Covid lockdown, and it now has had a further extension added.


interior of the Palais


Autumn Glory is the title of the show opening on Saturday 24th September, and Peter Arscott Ceramics is exhibiting there along with painters, sculptors and textile artists.


Peter Arscott ceramics on show


Possibly as a result of the long hot summer we have had, the apple harvest is early this year in Herefordshire. This means friends and neighbours will be desperately going round offering large bags to anybody they meet, in the hope that this will help with the glut. Other than freezing them, drying them, turning them into puree, or using them to throw at squirrels, any interesting and creative ideas that deal with large supplies of apples will be welcome.  Even leaving them on the garden wall for commuters to take before getting to the station makes few inroads.




In keeping with the tenor of this blog, here is a verse from Rupert Brooke’s “Heaven”:


Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June,

Dawdling away their wat’ry noon)

Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,

Each secret fishy hope or fear.

Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;

But is there anything Beyond?….


You can read the rest by clicking here.