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An Imperial Crown Chalice by Ash & Plumb

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Last week I went with friends to the Woodturning Connect Master’s Exhibition held in the Pewterers’ Hall in London. This exhibition – on the theme of the Coronation of King Charles III – was organised by the Worshipful Company of Turners.

I loved walking around the small exhibition, where each of the twenty or so pieces was so different from the other, and so skillful. Some were intricately patterned and coloured, some imaginative, some practical, and one, chosen by the V&A Museum, was a genius interlocking of four giant rings, titled Continuity Rings. It was beautiful – so complex, but so simple and pleasing, and being the size of small bicycle tyres, big enough to easily appreciate. I noticed that in the brochure they used the word torus rather than ring, describing the piece as ‘a sculpture of four interlocking segmented toruses made from 2,048 oak segments.’ The turner who produced the piece was Nathanael Griffiths, aged 20 from Chester.

A torus, in case you’re wondering, is (according to the Cambridge dictionary): ‘a shape that is a circular tube that is hollow inside’. It goes on to say :‘a popular shape for space stations is the doughnut shape also called a torus’.

Imperial Crown Chalice, shown in the photograph above, was another exhibit that I was drawn to. This was created by Barnaby Ash and Dru Plumb, the brochure describing it as a ‘playful and ancient reference to the form of the imperial crown but reinterpreted as a vessel … This vessel features many natural fissures that we have celebrated through stitchwork repair.’ I loved the deep colours in the wood, and longed to pick it up and touch its smoothness, everything about its simple oakiness and texture appealing to me.

But understandably, there was no touching of the exhibits, just the chance to admire these real treasures in wood, individual and ingenious in their interpretation of the theme. Sadly my postcard is not enough to do any of them justice.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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The sun came out today

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This morning dawned sunny and soft, the light sparkling with moisture and the leaves still clinging on.

It’s been a relief to see the sun after all the rain that has been scrolling over us recently, sometimes pausing, its attention leaving everything soaked. But the conditions we’re experiencing are little more than wet compared to other parts. In the north of England, and in Scotland, in particular its east coast, the rain has been drenching and persistent. It looks like the conditions there became unnerving over the weekend – properly wet and frightening for those caught in the worst of it.

However today, here in the south, this morning came along. It peeped into the room first thing, and has kept shining all day, bringing the warmth with it. It’s been the perfect time to be outside London. The grass is green, most of the trees still have their leaves, roses are budding and blooming, the birds are singing, and occasional bees can still be seen buzzing to and fro. Hard to believe it’s not long until the end of October.

Then this evening I looked out of the window and stopped what I was doing. There was the moon sliced clean in half, right down its middle, hanging like half a pearl in the clear sky, so balanced and calm. Apparently it’s a first quarter moon. It would be nice if some of its tranquillity could be passed down to us.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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The Christian Watt Papers

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“There was so much talk of war it made me feel ill.”

A hectic fortnight has meant that it’s taken me longer than it should have to read this book, but I’m now into the final third and just as fascinated as I was at the start.

From the beginning the voice of Christian Watt is as strong as the cover suggests. She has such a sense of who she is that her personality still reaches out loud and clear two centuries after she was born.

Like others in the fishing community where she was born her life is hard, but it becomes increasingly difficult when she starts to lose those she loves or depends on. When her husband is drowned she becomes utterly impoverished and exhausted, the effort of providing for their many children eventually destroying her mental health to such an extent that she is finally admitted to the asylum in Aberdeen on a permanent basis. It is there that she starts to write.

She writes about the different dialects still being spoken around Scotland, and of the pittance being paid by a “grateful nation” to a veteran of the Battle of Waterloo. She has no time for the pompous or pretentious, and is “furious at a society which forced bairns to work.” She wishes that better pay and working conditions could have been enshrined at the start of the Industrial Revolution, and she is scathing about the concentration camps of the Boer War.

Here is what she has to say about the arrival of the Great War.

“Never did I think I would live to see the day when the enemy would be coming out of the sky. They were flying in the air like birds and going down in the sea like fishes, and the world was running with blood.”

She loses family and friends at Gallipoli, Ypres and the Somme.

“No person wants to kill another. It is politicians who start wars and expect others to fight them.”

I am looking forward to reading what she has to say in the final hundred or so pages I have left.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023