from shell scoops and stone anchors

to a Mackintosh house

I left Cornwall behind on Wednesday and am now in Glasgow. It feels like a week since yesterday morning but here I am hunched over a keyboard again less than 36 hours later. On my last day in St Ives I walked up to the Leach Pottery which was another inspiring destination. It’s set up beautifully with contemporary exhibition spaces that contrast perfectly with the older studios that are presented as if the potters had just downed tools and gone off to lunch. The architecture is a curious Japanese-influenced local vernacular, a stream runs close by (but sadly disappears into a subterranean drain just a bit down the hill) and they’ve included little “experiences” for visitors…painting with Chinese brushes and water on a scroll that cunningly looks like ink when wet, but reverts to blank when dry, and the opportunity to sit down with a handful of clay and let your fingers play, giving those who have never tried to form something from mud a greater appreciation of the potter’s art by the time they’ve worked their way around to the shop. I don’t think I have much of a future in the making of chawans but it was fun to have a play.

I should also mention the St Ives Museum, housed in the building that was the original home of the pottery. It is a gloriously ramshackle collection of everything and anything all tumbled together; from the forceps used to pull small people out of bigger people (displayed next to women’s nightgowns) to a stuffed squirrel to an exquisite display of miniature killicks¹, carefully crafted from stones and wood and hand-twisted twine.