Kelmscott Willows

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acrylics, Cotswolds, gold leaf, Kelmscott, William Morris, willows

Acrylics and gold leaf by Candia

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Final Product!

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home-made, Kelmscott, preserves, quince, William Morris

 

From Kelmscott’s tree to quince preserve- made by me!

Kelmscott (the Interior)

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Arts&Crafts, Cotswolds, Kelmscott, Pre-Raphaelites, William Morris

This gallery contains 6 photos.

William Morris’ Quinces

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Kelmscott, quinces, William Morris

 

Today I asked a volunteer at Kelmscott if the quince trees were there in

Morris’ day and he said that they were.

Wonder what that fuzzy stuff is?  William Morris’ beard?

William Morris’ Medlars

Tags

Autumn, Isis ceramics, Kelmscott, medlars, quinces, William Morris

 

Straight from his garden at Kelmscott and soon to be preserved.

The quinces will be jelly and the medlars look lovely on my Isis

ceramics blue and white charger on a Morris tablecloth.

 

 

Great Coxwell’s Barn

Tags

aesthetic, Cistercian, Cotswold, Genesis, Great Coxwell, Henry VIII, Joseph, Malachi 3, Matthew 6, Pharoah, Pre-Raphaelite, sestina, The National Trust, William Morris

(Photo: Ballista: Wikipaedia)

 

Great Coxwell’s Barn

 

Off Hollow Way stands this vast, vacant barn:

huge receptacle for Cistercian tithes,

garnered from tenant farmers – a dry store,

where the granger checked accounts; did not trust

his hired servants.  Here Cotswold riches

were protected from thieves and from decay.

 

Christ had warned disciples about decay

and storing up of surplus in a barn.

Christians were always meant to share riches

and not to extract profit from fat tithes.

The parable’s ‘fool’ was he whose whole trust

was in possessions.  He had wrath in store.

 

Henry VIII would plunder a marked store

and most abbeys were subject to decay.

Monastic wealth was held in deep distrust.

Though Morris praised this cathedral-like barn,

Pre-Raphaelites would not restore tithes;

they venerated aesthetic riches.

 

We coveted colonial riches

and viewed the whole world as potential store,

compelling other countries to pay tithes;

forgetting moth and rust would cause decay.

What were the treasures we stored in our barn?

We’ll reap what we sowed: we abused faith, trust.

 

Joseph, in whom Pharoah had put his trust,

managed underground silos of riches

and, when his brothers came – not to a barn-

but to the pits where corn was kept in store,

did they recall they’d left him to decay

in such a space?  (He who asked no tithes.)

 

 

This massive hulk, once packed with peasant tithes,

now supported by The National Trust,

mouldered with neglect; died of decay,

until ‘heritage’ was seen as riches.

What are the values we would like to store?

Should we maintain the past?  Convert the barn?

 

Some build barns with their family riches,

but tithes benefited community,

as long as mutual trust did not decay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

News From Nowhere

Tags

chloral, Cotswolds, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Guinevere, hollyhocks, Janey Morris, Julia Margaret Cameron, Kelmscott, La Belle Iseult, Lancelot, mille-fleurs, shape-changers, Topsy, William Morris

(The Parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere

by Julia Margaret Cameron)

 

Since I live in the vicinity of Kelmscott now, here is an

old poem, re-blogged…

 

William:

I raised a latch of a door in the wall

and immediately knew this was home.

The garden’s rosy superabundance

was a mille-fleurs embroidery stitching

raucous cawing of rooks from those high elms, the

swifts wheeling, doves’ cooing and blackbird song.

A mulberry tree was central. Pastel

hollyhocks nodded their welcome and men

scythed reeds and floated them down the river

under the willow trees’ gray-green flickers.

Lead waterspouts were limply supported

from the mellow masonry and woodworm

pricked the panelling. I felt not sadness,

but a beauty born of melancholy.

Leaving my charcoal overcoat downstairs,

I inspected the quaint garrets where once

tillers and herdsmen slept under the eaves.

The sloping floorboards creaked under my feet.

I realised she had never loved me.

How could she? Women are all shape-changers.

This house is an E with its tongue cut out,

so it will never prattle its scandal.

Betrayal’s woven in its tapestries:

Samson with his eyes gouged out for his love.

Please, dear Janey, be happy…I cannot

paint you, but I love you – and now leave you.

Janey:

Some called it amitie amoureuse.

They dubbed me Guenevere, La Belle Iseult.

Once in this lost riverland, out of depth,

we drowned in our adulterous passion.

I heard carriages arriving at night,

so the cob’s harsh hooves had to be silenced

by leather shoes. I had no energy

when William was here, but took long walks

with Gabriel, who said our leaky punt

was not a poetic locomotion.

I keep my thoughts locked in my casket

in my bedroom. It was kind of Topsy

to bring me back that fine Icelandic smock.

Gabriel said it served his purposes well.

When they had Mouse the babes were not tiresome,

but Jenny’s impairment grows every day.

Tomorrow someone must trim the dragon.

In the studio I hear faint crying

over a stillborn child. He took chloral,

alcohol and would stay awake till five.

What was I to do with his exhumed verse?

Sir Lancelot had welded us as one.

I suppose I never loved him at all.

Tonight I left a pansy in Blunt’s room.

I am past sobbing that he does not come.

Core Curriculum

Tags

Aleister Crowley, Apple, apple bobbing, apple ducking, Carmenta, Ceres, Cox's Pippin, Dorothy Parker, freezing eggs, gingerbread men, pentagram, Pomona, Schadenfreude, Standard English, William Morris

Dru stood back to admire her boarders’ display board.

She had organised them to produce a poster advertising the Apple

Bobbing Evening.  Some, who had northern roots, had wanted to call it

‘Ducking’, but she went with the Standard English appellation.

Isolde had drawn a very sophisticated Pomona, which she had copied

from a William Morris illustration.  She was nearly as good at Art as Juniper

Boothroyd-Smythe had been.

Of course, fertility goddesses had been in her own mind ever since she had

heard that companies such as Apple might consider freezing their female

employees’ eggs.

Everyone was becoming excited but she had had to discipline a Sixth Former

who had quoted Dorothy Parker in her hearing- whether deliberately or not

she was unsure.

Ducking for apples-change one letter and it is the story of my life.

How could someone so young be tainted with such a degree of

Schadenfreude?  Or was that emotion only connected to an absorption in

the misfortune of others?  She would have to look it up in one of the girls’

German dictionaries.

The girls had decorated the borders of the poster with pentgrams, which

apparently are the shape you see around the seeds if an apple is cut

horizontally.  Dru had checked with the Religious Studies Department and

had been assured that these were shapes used in Christian amulets long

before they had been appropriated, or misappropriated by Aleister Crowley

et al.

One could never be too careful as parents were so litigious nowadays

and anything that they disapproved of was difficult to implement.  Dru told

some that the activity was part of the core curriculum, which seemed to

satisfy them.  She drew their attention to Carmenta– a version of the

goddess Ceres. The former had invented the Roman alphabet and so

was educationally relevant.  This damped down the fires of protest.

She had had to resort to hanging the fruit on strings, however,

as there had been an objection as to the potential exchange of body fluids

if girls opened their mouths underwater while trying to bite and secure a

Cox’s Pippin, or whatever.  The aggrieved parent insisted on there being a

First Responder in attendance in case her precious darling choked.

Drusilla did not intend to be pipped to the post, however.  She was going to

go first and, if successful, she would be the first to marry.

Thankfully Nigel had answered the invitation in the affirmative and he

promised to bring some gingerbread men and a couple of carved

pumpkins.

Bless.

And Sometimes Tea

Tags

bergamot, Cona, Earl Grey, Spode blue and white, tea ceremony, William Morris

I blush to have to confess something to you, Dear Reader.

Candia- truly-you can tell me anything.

Yes, and it will be round Suttonford in a couple of hours.

No, please don’t be cynical.  It’s not like you.

(It is actually, but hey!)

Well, Carrie, Brassie, Clammie and I had tea yesterday.

Tea!

I know.  Don’t be shocked.  We haven’t forsaken Costamuchamoulah

coffee shop. It’s just nice to sit quietly in a friend’s house and watch her

perform a tea ceremony.  So soothing.

Okay, so you wrote a poem about the experience?

No, not exactly.  I remembered that I had one in my file, so here it is:

AND SOMETIMES TEA

(That’s from The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope, isn’t it?)

Shut up and read!

AND SOMETIMES TEA

If there is a way to take tea you know

how.  It is something to do with the pot:

essentially silver.  Weak Earl Grey’s flow,

with its exotic scent of Bergamot,

is dispensed by your deft, be-rubied hand

into Spode blue and white cups which you use

always.  The William Morris tea pot stand

absorbs the heat while you hold court; amuse

me with your anecdotes.  Kitchenesque is

your period.  A background Cona drips

its homely memento mori.  For this

is an expansive moment while we sip

and sit, straining Time still.  We lean elbows

on a peacock-plumed Liberty oilcloth,

whose preening practicality yet shows

your craving for an aesthetic.  We both

counsel take, give; sacramentally eat

a forbidden bun-two latter day Eves

who do not try to read success, defeat,

by auguring the dregs of drained tea leaves.

We know that Life is hasty, brutish, brief-

the beautiful and fine are what we need,

to ease our pains and soften all our grief:

this ceremony necessary creed.

Merton Abbey Mills

Tags

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Epping Forest, Liberty, Merton Abbey Mills, Morris, Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Topsy, Wandle, William Morris

“If William Morris were alive today

he would turn over in his grave,” she said.

Reneging on co-operative roots,

weasly traders attempt to fob folk off

with cheap crazed pottery and Repro stuff

under bestriding Betjeman pylons

in the shadow of a silver Kaaba:

Sainsbury’s Savacentre.  Poor Topsy

would have topped himself to see his named pub,

a Riverside Free House, serving (slowly)

Pre-Raphaelite burgers and Liberty

Jacket potatoes.  Some spoof has written

under “Today’s Specials”: Leek and Cat Shit

Pie, £1.75 and Spinach and

Scrotum Quiche, £2.75.  Thick smoke

reminds one of past local industries:

snuff and tobacco.  Wading through potholes

one wonders at the willow-fringed Wandle

where fine printed silks were dipped by his hands,

dark, indigo-stained, like those large blue plums

which grew on the wall in his Woodford plot

in days when he rode through Epping Forest

in his miniature toy suit of armour,

looking for dragons to slay.  Now he knew

dyeing was an art and when the fierce floods

whipped the millwheel into activity

such as might have wrecked the very millhouse,

he may have thought his enterprise would fail

like the relationship with the beauty

who was such a burden to him.  But now

his Strawberry Thieves grace the punters’ ties.

“Have only beautiful or useful things”

falls on deaf ears, as past ideals take wings

and shopping trolleys fill with plastic junk

purchased from the monopolising store

which conserves workshops, but kills small growers.

Morris, you should be living at this hour.

England hath need of thee!  Here be dragons.

Textile printing at Merton Abbey c. 1890, from a booklet commemorating the 50th anniversary of the firm, 1911 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)