Tag Archives: art

Its a Kind of Magic

Well, it has only taken me about 18 months but at last I have found the time to enjoy reading Edmund de Waal’s book The White Road.  I am glad that I have waited until the right moment as I have been able to indulge myself with soaking up de Waal’s palpable enthusiasm for the subject of porcelain without feeling rushed.

I have had the time and the peace to read most of the book whilst invigilating our exhibition at Fountain Gallery which has its final day today.  Now this says something about the number of sales and visitors to the gallery and begs questions about self invigilated shows.  (Thank goodness for Tregony Gallery which cheerfully goes on selling my work without me putting in an appearance).   But that aside, the luxury of reading a well written book about the porcelain story has been a delight.

There are three lasting impressions from reading this book.  First is the extraordinary excesses which those with money and power went to in the past.  When Augustus the Strong of Saxony died in 1733 he had a collection of 35,798 pieces of porcelain (de Waal, 2015).  Secondly of the heightened emotions which the efforts to create ‘white gold’ in Europe seemed to invoke.  The alchemists searching for the formula for creating gold from base metals and also how to make white gold spent decades working in intolerable conditions, imprisoned and forced to experiment over and over again until they struck success (de Waal 2015).  Thirdly the wonder  with which people have always perceived this material.  De Waal describes the first makings of English porcelain by William Cockworthy as an obsession;

 ” To make something so white and true and perfect, that the world around it is thrown into shadows as the blackthorn does when flowering in the hedgerows in early spring.” (de Waal, 2015, p.225).

 

Honiton dish 2
Sometimes opening the kiln really does feel like a kind of magic!

 

 

Oh my goodness, I get that one!  When I open the kiln and there it is: a crisp, thin, translucent vessel with a pure, creamy whiteness.  It is a kind of alchemy if you ask me!

In Praise of Partners

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Alan has painted plinths, mopped brows, calmed nerves and polished vessels without a single complaint. 

I think I might have over-stretched myself a bit recently.  I have committed to too many exhibitions and commissions in a short space of time and found myself with a bit of a problem.  This blog is in recognition of the part of my team which always seems to come up with a solution to this kind of problem.  He does it with more cheer than I can muster on most normal days and with greater efficiency than anyone else I know.  In fact, he leaves me feeling more exhausted by his efforts than I was before but, quite frankly, I could not have got through the last few weeks without him!

 

My darling husband has not only been responsible for bringing me hot drinks and lightly poached eggs whilst I have been fighting the ‘Mother of all Colds’,

Absurd[1]
Sometimes I have been feeling like a scalded cat
he has also shopped for buckets of ice-cream; he has visited the chemist for the most vile cough linctus ever created; he has listened with patience and tolerance whilst I have alternately moped like a kicked puppy and scratched like a scalded cat;

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At other times I just wanted to crawl away and lick my wounds.
he has painted plinths late into the evening; he has waited at our private view pouring wine and engaging our guests with charm and wit and he has polished my vessels.

I have mentioned the wet polishing of vessels before.  It is a painstaking, time consuming, messy, cold, wet, unpleasant activity!  My other half has polished 21 vessels this week – at an average of an hour per vessel.  Well, you do the maths!  Even if I had been well and fit it would have been utterly impossible for me to get done all that needed doing unless someone took from me the load of doing the polishing.  One word of warning though.  He has done such an amazing job on the polishing that he might have constructed for himself a cross that he now has to carry for all time!!

Alan, thank you. I found something which says it far better than I can –  this is for you.