074 - Dreams are Made of Ceramic

Towards the end of last year, I captured the intrigue of a friend and we drove to Jaipur from Bombay for a few days. Escape was the prime motive, but I had inclinations to get inspired by the city’s architecture and craft, its colours.¹

The next month went in scouting and pinning for a variety of tile combinations. A bulk of late January and then Feb went in driving from one flooring vendor to another in a district that stands steadfast against the urbanisation that has swept most of Kerala’s more prominent parts. That the decision to figure tiling fell on my ill equipped and completely unqualified shoulders might make an interesting footnote in my life’s journal.

What can I say, there were at least a couple of days when I woke up dreaming of tile combinations and flooring ideas. On one such morning, I woke up and wrote — my dreams are ceramic now.

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Middlemarch

I finished reading Middlemarch last evening.²

Those of you who have read it will know the fate that met both Casaubon and Lydgate, ambitious men and their glory dreams. I do intend to insert the metaphor of ceramics for dreams here — the fragility of those dreams, ambitions and quests for greatness. To turn malleable clay to a durable tile needs temperatures of over 1200 degrees; human ambitions demand even more. We need to withstand the world’s pressures and heat against our make up. But it also refers to the inflexibility of such set dreams that can corrode and ruin relationships, that remains stagnant and outdated against the fashions of eventual time, that either get discarded or broken down for new. Fragility is a near constant end state.

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Venus of Dolni Vestonice

The 29000 years old ceramic figurine found in modern day Czech Republic

The Venus of Dolni Vestocine, carries ancient dreams and prayers with her. ³

The oldest known ceramic figurine, likely a goddess of an ancient tribe lost to history, held perhaps in her clay made structure the dreams and aspirations of those humans who believed in her powers to fulfill them. Or perhaps she was just an idol of what was then imagined a feminine ideal. But this, millennia upon millennia old ceramic figure was without doubt a result of artistic endeavours, if not the source of anything more. Some ceramic dreams do stand the test of time.

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Singama Pottery Painting

A Youtube title that lives up to its name, amazing gradation painting by Mayuki Kato on Singama ceramics.

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CERAMIC SYMBOLS

In blazing clay and stone 
the images are made 
with glazes brightly laid 
  on mouth, eye, bone. 

Through ram with glittering flanks 
and cock with flaming plume 
we shape a magic thanks 
  for breath and bloom.

Serpent of sightless depths 
by whom the vine is fed: 
sun bull whose tendons yield 
  red honey and brown bread.

In rite of hammered rock 
two palmed hands seek the sky; 
four holy forms unlock 
  the blue amazing eye.

By poet and potter William Pillin, of whom sadly not much is written.⁴

1. At the end of it, the Jaipur visit had its say, and the new house has more terracotta shades and Jaali work than what we might have had otherwise. Earthy green and blue and mild moroccan patterns have also found their way in. Here are some photos:

2. I wish to point that Will Ladislaw, like by the folks of Middlemarch, does not often get his due as a strong character, and is considered unworthy of Dorothea and a general lightweight by many critics and readers. I can only say, I disagree.

3. Speculatively, what the figurine represented is still inconclusive

4. Will was taught pottery by his more famous (and perhaps accomplished) wife Polia Pillin