Artisan's Week

Artisan's Week

We are nestled here between mountains. Our valley nestled like a bowl, a vessel, between mountains. The vessel of our valley is full of goodness, clean air and water, fertile earth, all the growing things, all the living beings that feed from the growing things. Deeper down beneath us there nestles the clay and minerals and oxides and further down still, the fire that lives inside our precious Earth. Above us during the day there shines the fire of our life-giving sun and at night the glow of our moon, the mysterious twinkle of the stars. The rain gently falling, or fervently falling, filling the river that flows past us, carrying our stories to the sea. Mists rise, as springtime birds suckle nectar from the rich blooms that abound. All these elements coalesce around us, pulling forth the seed, furling forth the plants, the leaf, stem, pod, flower, that feed the animals, that give the fibre, that feed and nourish the human, that make the medicines to tend the ailments of body, that craft the paper and dye the yarn, that become the wood that is crafted into precious objects of utility and beauty, the wood that fuels the forge, that feeds the fire, that sinters the clay, the clay dug from the deep, the metal refined by the hand from the minerals deep beneath. Earth made anew, transformed by the maker.

This week we have been blessed to journey with our elders of craft and amidst all the making there were threads of story, weaving through the loom. The work making meaning in the heart and restoring wholeness to the spirit. We spoke of the colour of stars and the colour of flames, the mythological underpinnings of the origins of Iron, it’s great gift to life and also our need to be vigilant to it’s potential for harm. We sensed the imperative of a deepening responsibility, to offer ballast to the technologies we grow in our evolving capacity to craft complexity from raw matter. Our need for greatest care and attention, and allowing the thing between our hands to matter enormously for a moment, even in the risk of its breaking. We spoke of the moving from what is known, through to what is imagined but feared, to the new place of knowing and integrating embodied wisdom, the work of our hands leading the way, the limitations of the material providing the framework, the bounds of our imaginations offering the scope. 

I could feel such goodness in these people, young and old. How we have been crafted ourselves by place and by earth and the hard work of the hands, to become humans who bare gifts for our tribe, humble gifts of understanding and transmutation, of purpose and nourishment, of presence and patience and perseverance. The wood workers bending together with gentle humour as they work, coaxing the material towards a new wholeness, a new goodness in the shape of a stool. Heads bowed together at the loom, reimagining the warp and the weft of our patterning. The synchronised striking of hammer to copper & iron, the music made by this shared making. This music serenading the fierce concentration required in finding centre, within the malleable clay at the potters wheel. The quiet toil of the binding of books, creating worlds in which future words and images will unfurl our future. The nourishing sustenance of food, alchemised to please and satiate the taste buds, the eyes, the belly, the wholeness of being.

Materials coalesce in cross pollinations of modality. Copper hammered to form vessel, copper in the rich green of the glaze that seals the rough rawness of clay, refining. Alumina as mordant to dye red cabbage yarn, Alumina fusing with Silica to  sinter the clay that it may hold water and bear food, foods rich in minerals, drawn from the earth by water through roots. The pots smouldering in sawdust, wood shavings, from wood sculpted, drawn, whittled, carved. Wood burnt to hone charcoal for the fierce heat that will melt the metal, fruits grown from wood harvested for feasting, artfully prepared and tastefully seasoned, paper crafted from wood, made vessel for meaning, wood grown from Earth. Metal extracted from Earth, Iron in the fire in the forge, Iron in the clay, pinky-red between the potters hands, iron in the pigments that paint the leaf and blossom that cover the books that tell the stories of our makings, Iron as mordant for dying yarn, the plantain rich in Iron to nourish our blood. Metal as the Potters wheel, wood as the spinners wheel, wooden and metal tools, needle, hammer, tong, axe, pan, knife, block, cup. Our hands as the tool of Earth, the living tool transmuting itself into ever more various forms.

The materials of the earth offer themselves up and are braided together by our song of creation. The wood of the wheel that spins the wool, the metal of the shears forged in fire, that harvest the fleece of sheep, the sheep grown fat from spring grasses and weeds grown of earth, as we are nourished by her gentle harvest. Earth that is dug and  turns the bowl to hold the food that feeds the folk. Earth that refined becomes the Iron that shears the sheep.  It cycles around, again and again, this great spiralling reciprocity, this noble generative force of our living. This earth that feeds us in every way, that nourishes us and offers us this bountiful array of ways in which we may ennoble ourselves with hand and heart, ensouling matter. 

Within this lies the alchemizing ingredients of disappointment and heartbreak. The broken pot, the burnt finger, the splintered wood, the arduous grappling with the sometimes unfathomable distance that lies between the imagined outcome and the thwarted reality. But I see the goodness that this questing has grown in us, has forged in us as makers. The way these materials have shaped us and made us a worthy instrument of this living celebration of life, that we may be bent by an unseen hand to transform and transmute raw matter, into useful tool with which to purposefully toil, into structures, fragrant with beeswax and linseed oil, that offer comfort and shelter for our weary bones, into humble vessels with which to contain our nourishment and quenching, into cloth with which to cover and warm and adorn the vulnerability of our bodies, the food that feeds both body and soul, the balms and tinctures that heal and cure when care is called for, the paper and tomes that carry the words of praise, the accumulated wisdoms of this grand adventure that is life upon this land. That is life within this bowl, this vessel of a valley encircled by mountains. 

We have laboured long and hard and strong at this work. We have made beauty and purpose. We have been humbled by our limitations of capacity and material, we have been wearied in the most satisfying of ways. We have been forged in the fire, shaped at the wheel, woven on the loom, whittled by the maker, hammer, shuttle, bowl, knife, tong, needle, drill, wheel, anvil, spoon, spindle, blade, flame, air, water, earth, ether.

  Images and Text Copyright Lucy Pierce 2022