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Fingal the Giant.

From "The Old Straight Track, by Jack the Lad.



Jack the Lad was a Northumbrian band formed by three ex-members of Lindisfarne (remember 'Meet Me on the Corner', or 'The Fog on the Tyne'?). They had three albums.

Max at Britishspeak posted a picture of Fingal's Cave on Staffa Isle, which reminded me of this track... and of Mendelssohn, of course.

Fingal's Cave, Staffa.
Hey! I wonder, could any of the visitors from Japan  explain why I 'm getting a lot of Jajanese visitors to this post? ありがとうございます。

The rock formation is (mostly) columnar basalt, of volcanic origin, cooling it forms these characteristically hexagonal pillars. Columnar basalt can be found in several other locations in the region, most notable across the sea from this island, in the Giant's Causeway of Northern Ireland, also in Skye, Scotland, in Iceland, and in Turkey, , if you're in the U.S. look up the Devil's Postpile, and the Columbia river basin...

Isaac Button, Country Potter.

Isaac Button was a country potter in my part of England, near Halifax, -Soil Hill Pottery, which had been working since the early 1700s belonged to him. Robert Fournier (I think it's Robert in the film carrying the board of pots away) and John Anderson made this film in 1963-64. The full film is about forty minutes long. I don't know if it is still available.

Update:March 26th, 2009.... Almost 40 minutes worth of Isaac, which I think is the full film, now posted HERE

In the Independent, November 18th, 1995, John Windsor wrote:
"Isaac Button was a true English country potter. In a day, he could turn a ton of clay into pots. I timed him as he threw a lump of clay on to the wheel, pulled it high, then cut it off with wire: 22 seconds. In an hour, he could turn out 120 pots. In a day, 1,200.
Button's kiln, at Soil Hill, near Halifax, now lies cold and desolate. He died in 1969. But the 41-minute video that records his dexterity had me on the edge of my seat. In his day, speed was essential. Even before the packaging revolution, household pots and jugs made from clay were treated as disposables. They cost only a few pence. Craftsmen potters had to be quick to earn a living from poorly-paid villagers.
Unlike other mass-produced art, hand-thrown pots seem to look better the faster they are turned out. The potter's skill improves with practice - yet there is no time for pretentiousness. Hence the charm of English country pottery made for cooking, baking, brewing, storing, growing seedlings or feeding chickens.
The founders of British 20th century studio pottery - Bernard Leach, Michael Cardew and the Japanese Shoji Hamada - sought out the few remaining English country potters and copied their techniques. But their debt to them is often overlooked and English country pottery remains largely undiscovered. There are fewer than a dozen collectors, few textbooks and no national collection. By contrast, the Japanese prize our country pottery, as do American folk art enthusiasts.
On 29 November, the first private collection of English country pottery to come to auction is at Bonhams - 85 lots discovered over 20 years by the artist-designers Peter Highley and Ruth Scott-Walton in markets and shops, in particular where the last country potteries clung on: Cornwall, north Devon, Dorset and Yorkshire.
Mr Highley defined its appeal: "The old country potters did not think of themselves as artists. But there is a purity and an honesty in their work that is sometimes missing from more refined contemporary studio ceramics."
By 1900 England had only 100 country potteries and by the end of the depression a mere dozen. There has been a pottery at Soil Hill since the 17th century. Before the war it employed 13 men. After that, Button could find no more apprentices and worked it alone for 18 years.
Most of the pots in the sale are "slipware", slip being creamy white diluted clay. Red earthenware was either dipped in it or decorated with it. The country glaze was galena, toxic lead sulphide, now illegal, that gave potters "bellyache" if they pulverised it when dry.
There are some Victorian remnants from Soil Hill in the sale: three bulbous jugs with cream slip interiors are estimated pounds 80-pounds 140 the lot. At the turn of the century, few earthenware cooking utensils cost more than 7d - pounds 1.60 today. In 1964, Button's 28lb cider jars cost 28s - pounds 14 today.
Button's strength and endurance were Herculean. The ton of clay he could pot in a day he dug himself from the hillside. Each firing of his 500 cubic foot kiln had to be stoked with two and half tons of coal at six firemouths. That kept him up for 48 hours or more at a time, during which he would climb on to the hot kiln roof, even in gales, to pull out test firings.
Once he had emptied the kiln he would begin barrowing to the wheel blocks of clay that he had processed: first blunged (mixed with water), sieved, dried on a stone floor heated by the kiln and twice pugged (compressed); all the time he smoked his pipe.
Button did, somehow, find leisure time, maintaining that he never left a pub on the same day that he entered it.
Bernard Leach, the father of British studio pottery, sought him out, wanting to know how much grog (gritty bits) he added to the clay of his "bigware". The dry Yorkshireman told him: "I have enough trouble gettin' t' bloody stuff out wi'out puttin' it in."
Me Again: Some years ago I wandered over the land at soil hill, picking up broken shards. The buildings are dilapidated, on a bleak hillside. In the pub opposite I found two old men who had known Isaac, and talked about him, the way he would stride down the hill at the end of the day, ready for a long session of ale.



Apparently, despite what John Windsor said, he lived there with his brother, and they worked together, but following some argument, years ago they would not speak to each other. They'd talk volubly with others, but if asked anything that referred to the other, they'd say "Tha'll 'ave ter ask 'im, Ah dooant knaw".
The brother died first, Isaac kept on until 1965, when ill health forced him to retire, he died in 1969, last of an era.
In pubs and cottages around, you'll see his pots, often regarded as just old things of no real value, though the antiques market has in fact seen a sharp rise in values, especially of marked pots clearly attributable to Isaac. He'd have laughed and shaken his head, "Dooant be daft, They's nobbut clay".

Disclaimer... I was once a potter, maybe I still am.

An AWARD!!!!

Okay... I awarded it to myself.
"Because I'm worth it",
as that tiresome woman on the television keeps saying.

MYSTERY CARROT AWARD
for website adequacy

Just about all the curry-house fliers I get through my letterbox seem to proclaim that they are Restaurant of the year, or have been awarded Best Asian Chef, or Best Fried Cat in Britain, or some such. I really do think they just create the awards themselves. Just like I would, if I was clever enough.

(Go on, click on the carrot and award yourself one!)

They're Back!

"A Matter of Loaf and Death"

Wallace And Gromit are busy with a new project.... Aardman Animations is making a 30 minute story for BBC1's Christmas programming.
All I am able to reveal here stems from my industrial espionage skills....
(reading The Grauniad, and visiting Aardman's website).

My favourite, absolutely favourite actor ever, has to be Gromit.

And of course, his trusty sidekick, Wallace.
Their house, at 62 West Wallaby street has been converted into a bakery... Monster robotic kneading arms, flour dust, a windmill on the roof, a forklift with hands in oven-gloves... But danger stalks the streets.. bakers are disappearing... a cereal killer is on the loose... Wallace is too in love to notice, but trusty Gromit is the detective on the case..............

Konevitsan Kirkkon Kellot

Or "The Bells of Konevitsa's Church"
Pic:-Antti Bilund

Piirpauke, a Finnish band

Absolutely Smashing!

Li Xiaofeng's "Beijing Memory" (2007), priced at $85,000

Tablewear!

I just love this, part of a body of work by Li Xiaofeng.

As a potter, I'm fascinated by the many uses of ceramics, from the earliest times to the present day. The space shuttle is protected from the searing heat of re-entry by ceramics, main battle tanks have ceramic armour plates, I just bought a vegetable peeler with a ceramic blade, I've eaten my breakfast out of a 2,000 year old Roman Samian ware bowl, I've drunk beer out of a tankard last used in 1642. Egyptian tomb paintings show the god Thothmes creating a man on a potter's wheel, nearly seven thousand years ago.

Yet ceramics, despite their extraordinary longevity and endurance, also speak to us of fragility, preciousness, of great value, easily broken.

Li Xiaofeng uses shards of Qing era porcelain, (about A.D.1830), stitching them together to create these garments. I can only guess at the meanings she holds attached, the past creating a shell, a carapace for the future, thoughts of fragility and breaking, but also of timeless durability, -fragile, but can last thousands of years... And the dichotomy of broken, yet precious.

In China's history, mountains of broken porcelain have been created, but treasured pieces were often stitched back together, small holes drilled in fragments and precious metal wires used to hold them, cracks rebuilt, filled with gold-leaf lacquer.

I saw these first via a link that led to Le zèbre bleu.

See more at Hongart.

Here's a few made a little earlier, in China, about 210 b.c. -current estimates are that in the three pits containing the Terracotta Army there are over 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots, 520 chariot-horses and 150 cavalry horses, the majority of which are still buried.

Argh! I'm just having a little html crisis. damn! I can't figure it out. never mind.

The Coolest Dancing Camel You'll See Today

Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers. The Lovers went on to form Talking Heads.



Just couldn't resist adding this, love the on-street bits......
The Bangles.