rutile

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.

St John’s Wort in rutile vase

Last July I was going on about the names of all the different plants that grow wild in Frith Wood, as well as discussing the benefits of geophagia for some reason (the eating of mud or clay). I also think worms came into it, somehow. Click here if you want to revisit.

meadowsweet

This July, however, I would like to introduce you to Filipendula ulmaria, or meadowsweet. It could be because it was used in the Middle Ages as a sweetener for mead that it gets its name, but take a whiff and it might remind you of something familiar. Its chemical constituents include salicin, which was synthetically altered because it causes less digestive upset than pure salicylic acid used in drugs, and thus aspirin was created. It was Bayer that named it aspirin after meadowsweet’s old botanical name: Spiraea ulmaria. It does have a whiff of aspirin.

meadowsweet

There is a lot of it now flourishing on the sides of the roads all over Herefordshire: fluffy, slightly floppy, pale cream bundles framed by the hedges they grow by. I confess that the real reason I mention meadowsweet is to promote the Ledbury Poetry Festival and Edward Thomas’ poem, Adlestrop:

Yes. I remember Adlestrop—

The name, because one afternoon

Of heat the express-train drew up there

Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

No one left and no one came

On the bare platform. What I saw

Was Adlestrop—only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,

And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,

No whit less still and lonely fair

Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang

Close by, and round him, mistier,

Farther and farther, all the birds

Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

The Barrett Browning Institute

The Festival this year is mostly online, though there are some great events held in Ledbury itself over the weekend of 9 – 11 July. Click here for all the available events (online and non-online). The Festival is on until 11th July. The Barrett Browning Institute in the town centre is the Festival’s headquarters, and if you go in you will find Sally Crabtree.

Sally Crabtree

Her latest installation is a sweetshop of conceptual confectionery which offers each member of the public a small gold coin which they can spend on just one thing at the counter and it explores the notion of choice in our lives-“Choose well. Your choice is brief, and yet endless” as Goethe says. It has the feel of a fairground stall with the excitement that each person goes away with a ‘prize’ so to speak. Of more value perhaps however is that each sweet that they choose comes with its own quirky, philosophical inner layer of meaning which they unwrap, depending on what they choose.

Festival A board

And for children… they can fill a jamboree bag with their own creations inspired by the Sweetshop of Words – including lyrical lollipops, glass sweets and pop a pop a poem balloons!

stonewarew rutile signal vase

As I said in the last blog, the difference between poetry and pottery is only a “t”, and some new pieces have emerged out of the kiln which, if not poetic, are at least expressive.

Wavy rutile vase

The latest batch of ceramics has seen the rise of an ingredient called rutile. Rutile is a glaze additive that produces colours ranging from light and dark blue, to tan, gold, yellow, and even purple. It has a mind of its own, depending on the glaze base and the firing conditions and, because it is a mined colorant, its makeup also depends on the mine source. Many potters test their batches of rutile before committing to a full bucket of glaze – all the result of the mineral’s notorious inconsistency. But when it works, it produces many crystalline, speckling, streaking, and mottling effects in glazes during cooling in the kiln and thus it is highly prized by potters.

Wavy rutile vase verso

Of course, here at Peter Arscott Ceramics, and following in the contrarian, or maybe heedless, tradition, rutile is not used in this way at all but rather mixed as a powder with water and a viscous agent to produce a colourant that can be applied like paint to the bisque surface of the piece, and then dipped in a transparent glaze. In other words, it is not used as a glaze but as a colour that gives the object’s surface an effect halfway between wood and honey. See for yourselves.

rutile close-up

By the way, Brits pronounce it “root ill” and Americans say “root isle”, which I prefer. On the other hand, and digressing wildly, why do Americans say “rowt” when they want to say “route”? Answers please. And since we are on the subject, why do they pronounce “rubbish” as “garbage” and “chips” as “french fries”? I am sure that at least one of the three American readers of this blog will tell me in no uncertain terms.

my friend Edith

I got know a resident sparrow, called Edith, busy looking for anything to feed its chicks in their nest in the roof’s gutter. Luckily they were not flooded out, and I felt so sorry for her that I bought a bag of mealy worms. She didn’t want to land on my outstretched hand but was OK on the table, where she would occasionally forget herself and leave a calling card. The fledglings have now flown, and she has lost all interest in visiting. Spurned by a sparrow.

Posts

Want to know what Nasocarpia is?