Monday, April 09, 2012

What would you do?

Come on Internet chums - your ideas and inspiration please. Just what would you do with the likes of this?

This here's my collection of potsherds - none are particularly old and none are particularly interesting...but I did think that if one individual piece is uninteresting, then together they might make music.

They are the cracked and crazed history of here; the story of the cack-handed residents of Lower House - the Vaughans, Bebbs, Smouts, Parrys and Bowens. Plates which slipped through those fingers. This is a story of dropped pots, the sense of loss; chagrin perhaps. Maybe some were lobbed in anger. Who knows. There are tales to tell.

These remnants of farmhouse meals felt the clatterin' of eating irons - and perhaps one or two of the more delicate fragments hint of a life which wasn't always one of privation on top of a low mountain. There are one or two pieces of delicate bone china.

It is my regret that I do not know their tales. Who, for example, broke Mother's lustre jug (a fragment remains) and who brought back from Aber', (or Borth maybe), that gold lettered cup, a present for 'Mam' - of which only the letters 'pr' and 'fro' remain. I wish I knew. And what did the rest of this fragment say? Did a bad boy let this slip through his fingers...










I've picked them up out of the soil, many from the old midden, a few from the top soil we brought in and some, serendipitously, from mole hills up on the field.




What to do with them all is the question. Any ideas?

I toyed today with making a platter shaped mosaic - it entertained me for an hour this morning. A tea pot stand.....nah. What I would really like to make is a monumental mosaic rabbit - and I do mean massive scale here - but the probability of finding enough potsherds for that project is remote. Dream on. Sensible suggestions please.

15 comments:

Pondside said...

A large garden table-top
An edging to a special bed...set it all in concrete.
Set the shards into the top of a wall.
Stepping stones.
A bench.
Dig a pond (Glam Ass will need to dig here) and line it with the shards.
Edge a patio/terrace.
Find a table that's seen better days and make a mosaic top for it for a garden room/TV room etc
Go for the monumental rabbit!

Frances said...

Oh my goodness, what treasure you have found!

My first thought is ...give them to me so that I can draw or paint all of them, or some of them. And then, I relax a bit, yield up some of those grabbing instincts, and read the comment that dear Pondside has left, and have to concur with all of her suggestions.

You do have treasures there! xo

Cro Magnon said...

Firstly they demonstrate the endurance of our love for Blue and White. Some could be rounded off, pierced, and made into necklaces. Others could be buried in the garden for others to re-discover. My similar pieces just rest on an exterior windowsill.

Cait O'Connor said...

I would make a garden table...or indoor table.

Pondside has a host of good ideas too.

Fennie said...

I agree: garden table top, round and the shards covered with a glass top.

Also possibly make tiles for insertion into other floor/walled tiled areas.

Or a mosaic on which you could mount your house name (or make the name out of the shards on a plain background)

SmitoniusAndSonata said...

Smitonius's partner had a pretty piece out of their garden mounted in silver as a pendant for her . I remain envious !
But I'm very taken by the rabbit idea .... doesn't have to be TOO huge , surely ? ( shades of Whats'isname and Harvey his big white invisible friend )

SmitoniusAndSonata said...

I mean James Stewart of course .

Chris Stovell said...

Yes, I'm voting for the table top mosaic too... except for the bad boy piece which I would have to keep on my desk!!

rachel said...

You could add them to my near-useless collection of Victorian cream and delicate green tiles, and Take Them Off My Hands......

mountainear said...

I'm going to have to do something aren't I?

Love the idea of a piece of jewellery....and that would leave enough over for all the other suggested projects.

frazzled said...

Id take inspiration from gaudi but instead of a lizard I'd do a chicken, built in concrete and st in a wall of a barn...

frazzled said...

look here for inspiration! http://www.katygalbraith.co.uk/untitled-gallery-29504

bayou said...

Oh, beautiful finds and beautiful ideas! I would make a mosaïc on a serving tray (I have one spare which needs upgrading) or I would glue one piece each on easy plant labels to give them a special touch. Hope you show the final result(s). Enjoy!

Nikki - Notes of Life said...

Sett a mosaic into a box, table-top or some-such thing! :)

hasenschneck said...

Rather late in the day, I would do this: http://www.delacreme.se/?p%C3%A5-vaggen,31 or this if I had such a fine collection of fragments of china.