Author Archives: Bridget Macklin

I am an artist working in the field of ceramics creating fragile porcelain pieces which are inspired by the environment or by peoples relationships with the environment and with each other and which often incorporate finds to support their narrative.

Smoking

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One of the most exciting things about Cornwall is the beaches.  Miles of beautiful golden sand and gently splashing waves.  I have my favourite, which is where my children dammed streams, built castles, explored rock pools and played for shivering hours in the water during their formative years and to which I still return regularly when I need the type of space that only an empty beach can supply.  But now I go there for another reason too; I go to play with my ceramics.  I dig a big hole in the sand, put my biscuit fired pots into it, wrapped in tiny bits of leaf or seaweed, build a fire over the top and set fire to the lot. Then I sit and wait.  Hours later; when the sun has come up and tracked most of the way across the sky; when the early morning dog walkers have been replaced by families who have pitched their shelters, eaten their picnics, played until they drop and gone home again to be replaced by the serious surfers if the conditions are right; when the tide has receded all the way down the beach and is threatening my toes with the last ripples of the incoming water, I dig the cooling pots from their pit and carry them gently home.  I resist the vast temptation to take a peek because at this stage the pots as incredibly fragile.  Once they are properly cool I carefully ease them from their wrappings, wash them gently and polish them to give the colours a boost and there you have it – Smoky Pots!  On a page of this blog, coming soon —–

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The extraordinary thing is that so few people show any interest in what I am doing.  I always make sure that I am tucked out of the way for safety reasons – I would hate some small child to run across my hot embers – and I go below the high water mark so that I am confident that I can leave the site completely cool.  I also remove all signs that I have been there at the end of the day but I cannot get over the lack of curiosity that other users of the beach exhibit.  Now if I saw someone sitting by a fire all day on a beach without actually cooking their lunch I would eventually go and ask what they were cooking.  But I suppose that is just me!

 

Barnacles

I suppose that, given when I am not thinking about ceramics, I tend to think a lot about sharp things on rocks which might damage me or my boat, Annika, my nights have been spent dreaming about barnacles this week.  This got me wondering about why any creature would chose to live in the kinds of inhospitable places that barnacles live.  Who would chose to spend their entire adult life fixed to one spot, either submerged by pounding salt water or sitting, hunkered down til the next tide comes in?  I wonder how much it has to do with barnacles being unable to fight off the competition for more comfortable homes and how much it has to do with being better adapted for life in such hostile places than any other creature.  Is there an optimum size for a barnacle colony?  Can one barnacle survive on its own as an adult for long or does it need the help and support of its neighbours?  In my semi awake state I started to wonder about how a baby barnacle decides to set up home in a particular spot.  What does ‘des res’ look like to a barnacle and what would happen if they refused to settle down and decided to remain as a swimming species for the rest of their lives – would this cut their lives very short?  What would they achieve that they could not have achieved fixed to some rock or the underneath of my boat?

You might think this is all completely irrelevant to a blog about ceramics but I don’t think so.  My ceramic pieces are different and fragile.  They are about exoskeletons and protection and, believe me, nothing needs protection more than a barnacle does!  So later this morning I reached for the only book to hand, in our rather basic accommodation in Cornwall, that had any hope of answering my questions and I discovered a number of extraordinary facts.  I am not sure that I am not now left with more questions than answers but I do wonder why barnacles feed through their bottoms!  I am curious about the fact that barnacle larvae are called nauplius and cypris.  Who thought those up!  Most interesting of all I discover that, even among barnacles there is competition;- You would not find B.baliniodes living alongside C.stallatus for example.  The C. Stellatus just won’t let poor old balinoides settle down on its patch.

It is good to know that while I am away from the studio, sailing to my heart’s content, I have not been letting my brain addle.  I feel a series of barnacle shaped ceramics coming on . . . .