DECOUPAGE AND UP CYCLING.

 

I’ve always hated the term up cycling, as more often than not is down cycling in my eyes. The obsession we have in giving, natural stone, brick and all manner of fine wooden furniture a coat of white paint is depressing. Maybe it is yet another sign of our disconnection with nature, or are we now that depressed that we have to have everything light and bright. My own home is a drab grey rough harling, while inside there is no white paint apart from bedroom ceilings. My idea of up cycling is to turn the ordinary into the extra ordinary, and that certainly does not include slapping a coat of white paint over good honey coloured or richly figured hardwoods. One of the most successful ways of adding interest to what may well be a dull piece of furniture is in the art or craft of decorating with paper cut outs, or decoupage. This is a useful method of covering damage as well as enhancing the dull with a little decorative quality. Twenty years ago I bought a box full of old book and amongst them was one very tatty volume containing masses of engravings. This worthless book has been cannibalised time and again for decoupage. I covered the rather uninteresting back face of a fourfold draught screen in the parlour, while out in the hall a small brown painted table purchased from the local charity shop was transformed.

An old trunk found in the barn took on a new lease of life, while the damaged surface of an 18^th century mahogany tray was covered with a period map of the world including discoveries by Captain Cook and encircled with soldiers. 

I was given an old wash stand minus its top that also received the treatment on the new top and paneled sides. Most recently I rescued an old pine box from a Tolsta croft house built in 1909. The box was the only piece of furniture that didn’t end up in the skip.

 The house was demolished back in October and apart from some sound salvaged v lining timber, the entire stone built house ended up in the local quarry dump. A tragedy in this day and age. I felt particularly disheartened after my own croft house had be nominated BBC Scotland’s home of the year, and I had assumed this sort of vandalism was over. 

  

A VIEW FROM THE ROOF TOP

 

As an artist, looking, to a large extent is what I do. I discovered when rock climbing that this is equally import, not simply to search out the next hold or move, but in taking time to recognise exactly where I was, be that half way up a cliff face or sitting at the top. To view and discover my world from a different aspect is the same for all of those who would look. And so it was, during what felt like the first spell of fine weather this summer I had the ladders out and was repainting the front of the roof. After last winter’s hail storms had acted like sand blasting, I was pleased to have got the back done earlier in the year. Now at the half way point I remembered to look, if sitting on the ridge was to be the summit of my day then I must take time out to absorb just how good it feels. I have been higher when sweeping the chimneys and taken time to sit atop the pots and survey the full 360 degrees from on high. No vertigo for me, or God.

From up here I could see the allotment like scratching’s of my back garden, clear areas from potatoes dug and onions lifted, fresh rows of strawberries replanted and the healthy glaucous green of swedes. The fresh fronds of carrot tops spill out from within the box I’d made to combat root fly. It has worked this year and I have the most wonderful clean sweet tasting carrots.

August sees the start of harvest beyond that of the daily picking to eat. The all-important storage for winter months starts with getting in the peat and the stacking there of. This year, after a damp summer I was pleasantly surprise to see just how well they had dried. The old blackhouse shed is full with sacks of caorains (smaller pieces), and the new stack sits tall and proud before the crumbling remains of last years. Although further south they may have had a record breaking heat wave and drought we’ve had it damp, which meant ideal conditions for potato blight. This has resulted in a good deal of small potatoes as well as a smaller harvest as they had to be lifted early. The onions have been placed outside in boxes each dry day and the fun part of string up has begun.

As always gardening has its ups and downs, but it has overall been a good year for growing, and this has been particularly apparent when it comes to trees I’ve planted. For the past three years they’ve been barely visible within the rushes and long grass, but now they are up and away putting on growth that you must surely be able to see if you stood and looked for long enough. I remarked to Donald during our evening walk that I couldn’t imagine a life that didn’t include the growing and planting of trees. The pleasure it gives me to know that something will continue long after I’m gone, that will grow taller, stronger, and more beautiful than me. So, as I sit up on the pulpit ridge of my roof, paint brush in hand looking east across the Minch, I glory in a day that I can say has been summer.   

STITCHING MY WAY THROUGH THE COVID YEARS AND CREATING A BOOK.

 

They were advising people to take up embroidery as a good therapeutic pastime during the lockdown period, but then I already knew that have been stitching for years. I had a bigger project in mind.

In many ways it was business as usual, spending days in my own company, hearing the neighbours going about their daily routine of feeding and milking the goats. Lockdown had struck as I returned to Brittany, and there was no immediate way I could head back to Scotland. It was evident right from the start that there wasn’t going to be any quick fix route back to normality. So, I started clearing the garden and digging in a load of well-rotted goat manure deliver from next door. I scrabbled through the seed drawer to discover what seeds I still had that were within date. It turned out to be a bumper year, trips to the supermarket became less frequent and I was freezing as well as giving away masses of vegetable.

For over a year now I had been contemplating how I could construct a needlework book and had settle on a concertina form as the only logical solution. All I had to do now was to decide on the size and start stitching, and from that very point the subject for the first page arrived.

THE ABILITY TO OVERCOME THE FEAR TO BEGIN SEPERATES THE DREAMER FROM THE ACHIEVER.

Within a classical stylised floral boarder I placed the letter of the alphabet and below a small thatched Arts and Crafts cottage with the text “Home sweet home better in being humble”. A white rabbit and brown hound leaping forth from left and right while behind the garden fence a profusion of gigantic roses tower higher than the house. I used some left over ivory coloured curtain lining as the support which gave the image a good clean crisp look. I used mainly cotton embroidery thread for the finer work only turning to wool for the cottage and foreground. For the second page I try my hand at corded appliqué work. I decided on a background of simple black striped ticking and the subject was a stylised floral arrangement in a shallow dish place on a table. The table cloth was made from a more ornate piece of 19^th century mattress ticking and the flowers were cut from some old curtain material sample books. The corded applique was done entirely with tweed wool thread as were the dark red bobbled stems. It was at this point that a friend’s daughter Luana arrived from Spain to do her confinement in my cottage next door. We kept socially distance for a few days, but we were soon sharing morning coffee out in the garden. As we chatted I would stitch and it wasn’t long before Luana asked if I had a spare hoop and some wools. During a particularly fine spell of weather we would sit and stitch or work in the garden. To have the luxury of such good company was an added bonus that I had not expected.

SAMPLE STICHES, PAGE THREE.

I went through a variety of ideas for this page but in the end decided that the simplest solution to display sample stitching was to use a background of ticking. The piece I used has rather fine red and beige stripes, purchased year ago from a depot vent in Morlaix. Mattress ticking in France during the late 19^th century and up to the middle of the 20^th century remained very traditional and often came in very vibrant colours. I used a mix of tweed wools and heavy white cotton throughout for both the stitches and names. I included everything from basic blanket stitch to fishbone cross stitch and Bokhara couching. In the broad central red panel I embroidered entwined flowers and a sample of couched basket weave, while a few insects and a moth appeared stitched in wool.

300 YEAR OLD OAK

During a stroll through the fields across the road form my house, one particular oak tree stood out in the hedgerow as having serious history. Oaks had already suffered their own form of pandemic with die back and I wondered, during its evident centuries of life what the old oak might have seen and endured. I took a photo and from that made a sketch to the required page size. Transferring the image to the background material was as usual a process of cutting up the original sketch and drawing around each segment. There has to be an easier way but when needs must you’ve got no internet connection to access that u-tube video showing you how, simply get on and find your own solution. The entire tree was stitched using wool tweed yarn apart from the very smallest of twigs. There is I’m sure a magnificent selection of colours available in embroidery silks and cotton, but I preferred the limitation of using what I had to hand. I used long stitch, blanket stitch and French knots throughout. The result could not have been too far from reality as Luana recognised immediately the old oak from across the valley. Writing the imagined history of the tree came relatively easily to me as I stitched, but fitting those words into the required page size was a process of trial and error. It took several hand written copies of the text before I found a suitable font size.

300 years ago a tender shoot broke loose from an acorn forcing its way down into a rich clay loam. Days later a vertical shoot ventured forth into a crisp spring morning. During the winter of 1784 the oak suffered by the hand of man a massive shock when its head and five major limbs were removed. This first harvest of burning timber only served to make it stronger. Despite being unable to heal the wounds and rot setting in to the point where it became partially hollow the aging tetard persisted. Many such harvest were made over the following years as the surrounding land continued to be cultivated by man, and while wars raged wildlife sheltered beneath its limbs and within the folds of its bark. The old oak hollow state provided it with added cylindrical strength that also protected it during the age of the chainsaw, when men felled younger clean trunked trees to burn. During the 20^th century thousands of kilometres of Brittany’s talus were destroyed, but tucked away deep within the protective folds of the Ellez valley the old tetrad still stands, silently marking the passage of time.

Tetard, translating as tadpole in French and is the name given to oaks that have had their leading head removed. This often results in a much shorter tree that over centuries of pollarding for fire wood can produce a massive head with relatively narrow trunk that does indeed resemble a tadpole. Such oaks growing on talus similar to the Cornish hedges are specific to a small area within Central Finistere.

GEORGINA AND BILL-LINDA. 

Rummaging through some old sketch pads from my trips to Western Australia I came across some drawings done by Georgina and Nicky when they came over with their parents Charley and Lara on a trip around Europe. I remember well the two girls struggling to imagine just how old my house was. 1692 was way older than anything they’d seen in WA, and they thought the dark interior must be full of ghosts. Having no television meant that pencil and paper came in very useful and aged four and seven they both produced some interesting images that now I felt would translate well in fabric. The first drawing, done entirely by Georgina, required little in the way of changes other than to redraw and scale up to my chosen page size. I kept all of the background detail but enlarged the foreground to include two bunches of tulips either side of the path and to balance that I put two white dogs stitched using French knots. The text, as so often does came after. It seemed obvious that this was indeed Georgina and her lips could only be cherry red to match the cherry tree growing alongside her. The wonderfully hairy sun also has full smiling lips. Opposite the cherry tree is another tree which seems to have come from a warmer climate of palms or maybe ferns. Beyond on the far hills is a small house but also a tepee, which I believe was inspired when visiting Luana’s parents and seeing their tepee. When stitching the two fluffy white dogs I included a small blue glass bead for the eyes, which I had coincidentally bought while out in WA. I had no idea at this point just how significant these blue glass eyes would turn out to be when I started stitching the accompanying image.

Once again the drawing of the little girl was provided by Georgina but the irate fat man was from Nicky’s hand. In placing the finer pink silk material used for the face over the green background it gave the poor child a five o’clock shadow. I reminded myself that I do not make mistakes when it comes to stitching so decided to go along with it and add a Dan Dare cleft chin and stubble. What sort of monstrous child was about to be revealed. Very trendy for these confusing time I realised this would be Bill-Linda, cheekily apart from the stubble, resembling my neighbour Belinda. Only when I had added the earing and blue glass beaded necklace did the full sordid story become obvious. Those eyes were indeed the same as appears on Georgina’s fluffy white dogs. Bill-Linda has a necklace and ear rings made from the eyes of fluffy white dogs. The wonky roofed house was provided by Nicky, but the tree made with a fragment of Arts and Crafts movement upholstery material was taken from one of my own drawings when aged four. Bill-Linda comes fully equipped for the butchery of fluffy white dogs, as poking out from her handbag can be seen an axe head and a knife handle. The bag itself, as if one didn’t already know is an I-bag, which seemed so appropriate in this era of I-phones and I-pads. All the detailed work is once again executed with tweed yarn apart from the delightful sprinkling of silver tinsel threaded hearts across the blood red dress.

THE PRIVATE VIEW.

Using the childhood game of head body and legs, I produced some strange images, and with a little bit of mix and match I devised three very different characters. The central character was inspired by a ceramic piece that I had seen thirty years earlier during an exhibition at the Black Swan Gallery in Frome. It depicted a rather pompous looking camel standing on two legs with one hand behind its back and the other holding a glass of wine. I had been making ceramic animals myself and knowing my interest I was shown it by the then director Anne O’Dwyer. She explained it was called the private view, but unfortunately it had been damaged in transit so would not be going on show. I regret to this day not having made an effort to buy it. My stitched rendition of the private view sees three critics; one so short that he cannot possibly see the beautiful rose painting, another snakes up his own walking cane of importance to give them a close inspection through his half-moon glasses, while the central character is all too occupied in drinking the wine and showing off his own stunning tulip tail.

DAYS OF THE WEEK.

As the weeks of lockdown passed me by, I realised that I had totally lost track of time and had very little idea of what day of the week it was. One doesn’t have to look far for ideas, and so I settled on a candelabra style tree. Out in the garden the fattest of exceedingly vocal pigeons, apply named “clatter birds” would smash their way out of the trees as I wandered down to pick the first courgettes, and so it seemed totally logical that these pigeons would represent each day, and crowning them all the dove of peace to represent Sunday. The rather dejected looking pigeons are inspired by naïve images I’d seen in the downstairs cloakroom of my friend Polly Devlin’s house in London. A couple of very oversized butterflies give spandrel balance to the image, while a snail and willow puss moth give interest at ground level along with tulips and the ever present eye of nature at the base of the tree.

FFP ERVE GOUCALOU 1692

I bought my Breton farm house back in 1989 for the princely sum of £15,000. Shortly after I bought the adjoining derelict cottage for £900. In the ensuing years I transformed them into what must be one of the finest houses in the commune. The history is relatively easy to follow as the most important original granite window lintel is inscribed with the then owner along with the date of construction. I did a day of research several years ago in the records office in Brest and discovered it had been inherited by the daughter Katherine who married a Francois Core from Brennilis. Since then it had been owned by every family in the village and most recently by the family L’hours, such was the norm of intermarriage in rural communities. During the inheritance division between the nine L’hours children, the house had been left with the bare minimum of ground, but in English terms that was ample for a good half dozen building plots. The letters FFP stand for fais faire par, made to be made by, and so I decided to make it a marriage sampler between Katherine and Francois. The image of the house depicts it in its present form, but back in the 18^th century it would not have had so many windows. In fact the front of the old farm house probably only had one window upstairs similar to the only other house in the village of that date. The roof then would have been a steeper pitch and the first floor only used for storage. During that period there were few actual farm buildings and the animals lived inside with the people sharing the ground floor separated by a rough wooden partition. The adjoining cottage, which served as my studio did indeed have an outside staircase to the first floor entrance door but it was a simply descent with no roof covering. The chein asseyez, or sitting dog dormer windows also added during the period of extensive renovation. Kathrine and Francois are depicted in typical 18^th century dress, still seen today on the ever popular Quimper ware pottery. The other decorative symbols are those classically used in Breton furniture making.

TEDS DEMISE.

By now I had ceased to listen to any more depressing radio news, preferring to remain with my rather jaded view of the human race and its demise. On waking one morning, my eye caught that of the large teddy bear sitting in the chair opposite. An idea started to form. Ted would represent man, and in two illustrations I could depict his down fall and the reason for it.

Ted thought to make a trap the best idea he’d ever had. Later on reflection he wished he hadn’t.   

The two images arrived fully formed and for Ted I had the sun bleached portion of some velvet curtains I no longer used. By day Ted is seen digging his whole surrounded by nature both above and below ground. The mole I was particularly pleased with as at last I had found a use for the mole skin I had cured a decade earlier. The two wooden spikes lie waiting to be placed when the trap has been dug sufficiently deep. In the second image Ted is shown later that night having fallen into his own trap. It would seem however hard we try, we succeed only in making traps for ourselves. Too clever for our own good, and a natural result of a too bigger brain. Dinosaurs became oversized but they did not cause their own demise. We are too many, too arrogant and selfish, which will inevitably be the cause our own destruction. Does this worry me, not at all, and this led perfectly on to the next page.

WORDS FROM LORD BYRON.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society where none intrude, by the deep sea and music in its roar.

I love not man the less, but nature more.    

These words were stitched on a coarse linen and placed simply within a classical sampler setting. Like so many child samplers of the 18^th century the words are not immediately obvious as they are intermingled with the various stitching technics and patterns.

THE BACK COVER.

I since childhood always had a fascination with insect, and having found two small remnants of floral fabric I decided to use them as a background for stumpwork insects. Due to the raised nature of the work this could only be used as the back cover. Executed in a mixture of cottons and tweed wool yarn these stumpwork insects as amongst the finest detailed work I have produced and although somewhat stylized and exaggerated they do truly seem to be crawling across the page.

ATTESTATION DE DEPLACEMENT DEROGATOIRE.

Throughout the confinement period everyone in France had to fill out whenever they left their home an attestation de deplacement. This gave you the right for one hour to take exercise, to get provisions, to assist a family member or person in difficulty, to attend a meeting with administrators or justice. Failure to fill out such a form correctly with your date and place of birth resulted in an immediate fine of 130 euros. I felt this form now merited its own page in my stitched book and as such should include a few magnified images of viruses other than that of covid. During that summer I took long walks along the valley calling in on friends, but also spending solitary time with nature, revisiting as well as discovering corners of overgrown woodland I hadn’t tramped through in over a decade. Wading in the shallows of the Ellez River, swimming naked in the cool deeper sections, stretching out on its mossy bank to dry in the sun, listening to a world that was sumptuously silent.

PATCHWORK HOMES.

By now there seemed like there might be a window of opportunity that would permit me to get back to Scotland. Although Norman had sent me a mixed box of tweed yarns my mind was increasingly wandering and wondering how my friends and home on Lewis were fairing. It felt like it was now or never and so I booked my ticket, got the necessary checks and headed for the ferry. Such was the level of disorder that I received three different notices to inform me that the ferry the time and place of departure had changed as well as the ferry itself. I eventually made the crossing from Ouistreham to Portsmouth, arriving that evening. Parking and sleeping in the van just north of Portsmouth I was able to make an early start and managed to do the entire trip north in time to catch the ferry across the Minch and home to New Tolsta. Maybe it was the lack of traffic, but even I was impressive with the endurance one has when it comes to seeking the safe haven of home. It seemed only natural that I should now be looking at island homes, as BBC Scotland’s Home of the Year program had contacted me and was keen to see photographs. The idea of patchwork came from an Esher like quilt that Kaffe Fassett made for an exhibition at the American Museum at Claverton, outside Bath. The Fassett quilt depicted a variety of oval hat boxes within a boxed design, and so decided to use this idea but replace those boxes with a variety of dwellings found on the islands. This included various rusty tin roofed dwellings, Nissan hut, Black house and inevitably a variation of my own croft house. I had returned to my island and home.

MAKE DO AND MEND.

For this classic sampler subject I chose once again a coarse linen and stitched a variety of decorative ways of darning. The work involved in darning is to my mind one of the most exacting, and to then add a decorative weave into the repair goes above and beyond the call of duty. I felt at times that I really did require a magnifying glass and could only think that such work would have had to have been done by younger women with perfect eyesight.  The rather random placement of these darning patterns enabled me to choose an equally random selection of early sampler motifs mostly from the early 18^th century. The strange stag came from a Nordic weaving pattern.

LADY PETHERSTON’S REMARKABLE BOSOM.

It was perhaps as a direct result of getting involved with BBC Scotland and their Home of the Year program that my mind became occupied with interiors. After their preliminary visit they had told me to change nothing, but I felt a little light dusting and a run through with the vacuum cleaner wouldn’t go a miss. The image that came to mind, while in my own parlour was that of a Jane Austin novel, depicting a trio of fashionable ladies from the early 19^th century taking tea. It is only now looking back at that completed image that I see it also has a certain doll’s house charm in that everything is slightly out of scale. The fire place and over-mantel mirror are enormous in comparison to the ladies seated around the table, and were a fire to be lit in the grate they would surely roast. The height of the table is no higher than that of the brass fender, but despite this the room has depth with its view into the garden framed by a pair of lavishly draped curtains. These curtains were made using mattress ticking as was the Regency striped wallpaper, and the two black and white prints came from a remnant of toile material. The inclusion of a Dalmatian dog and the none too content cat adds to the drama while the geometric design carpet once again lend depth. The text as so often happens came to me later as I was stitching. During the slow process of stitching my mind wanders to all manner of things, but in this instant there seemed to be a story behind the image. It was only having completed the three figures that I noticed that two of the women seemed to be looking at the lady on the left and more specifically looking at her bust. The resulting text stemmed from this.

During the partaking of tea in the front parlour Sid’s hissing went unnoticed as both Emily and Maude Western admired the way in which a combination of powder blue stripes and Honiton lace enhanced Lady Petherston’s remarkable bosom.

FRONT COVER.

I had gone through many different titles, but in the end came back to simply “Stitched by Tom Hickman” I wanted to impart from the outset a feeling of the dedication to detail and so incorporated that first monastic like “S” to the word stitched. One of the earliest uses of stumpwork was on 17^th century book covers and so once again, being that outer front cover I wanted to incorporate some form of raised work. The still life image of a tray of fruit on a table gave me ample opportunity. The tray, watermelon, pear, cherries, strawberries, lemon, orange and grapes were made using a variety of coloured felt and highlight stitches, while the leaves, tray boarder, candlestick and table cloth were done using tweed wool yarn, all of this was stitched onto a heavy cream twill. The design of the book and how it would fold using wooden hinges took a little time to perfect but with the assistance of a cabinet maker friend Simon we managed to find the correct profile to allow opening in both directions, and turn the all-important boxwood finials and feet that act as decoration but also hold everything together.        

THE FINAL PAGE.

At the beginning of October, and when consulting my Face Book page I realised I’d missed my birthday. Nothing unusual there, but it did remind me of my only ever birthday party when I was 50 years old. It took place in France since at that time most of my closes friends were in Brittany. I held it over an afternoon around the village bread oven. We had done some running repairs to the old granite oven and over several weeks had got it running efficiently. People brought things to cook, which included pizza and bread, but also cakes and rice pudding. I was surprised just how many people turned up. The weather was kind and it drifted on into the evening with music and singing around a fire, and I was pleased that at the very end the half a dozen or so who remained were all French. For this occasion I wrote a text which I attached to the invitation, and it was this that I now felt was the perfect way to finish the stitched book. Having embroidered an engraving like portrait of the author as he was at the age of fifty I then stitched the all-important words.

When as a small boy wondering what life might hold for me, it seemed vast. How could I have possibly imagined: The intensity of love for another human and the devastation of loss. The passion for beauty that would nourish my creative energy and that which I was able to build by employing my anger and hatred of injustice. The constant wonder in nature, the hope renewed with every sunrise and contentment at its setting. The joy of those friendships around the world which confirmed to me that reinforced my belief that there is good in all of us, also the difficulty I would have at times in hanging on to that belief. The determination required each day to combat that cliff face of irrational fears, and the courage to simply say what I think. The fun I would have in playing the fool, laughing to the point of crying. The enjoyment I get from living alone and yet not lonely and the clarity that would bring to a life lived differently at my own pace. The emotions that at times would overwhelm me and the relief in such feeling could not kill me. The satisfaction in the choices I would make and the choices I would take, even those that led nowhere. The pleasure I would derive from cultivating a garden. The changes I would see in my world and the difficulties I would have in accepting them. The knowledge after all those years I would remain remarkably ignorant.

Re-reading this text I can still be reduced to tears, not only for the depth of sentiment behind it but also the fact that I didn’t spot the missing L in overwhelm when proof reading.

Started in March 2019, the entire project took me fifteen months to complete.

 

 

 

     

LOWERING STANDARDS OF LIVING.

 

CHOSING BETWEEN AN ELECTRIC FRIDGE, OR A SLATE MEAT SAFE?

During my trip south last month it didn’t rain at all. Since my return it has done little else but rain. Well perhaps I exaggerate, for I do remember a couple of fine days when I was able to stack the surprisingly dry peat up into cones, and get most of the caorains bagged. However I seem to have missed the window of opportunity to bring them home. My fear now is that if the rain keeps up the moor will be too wet to get a tractor down to the peat bank. Such are the worries for my energy supply and source of winter heating. For many this winter it will be how to pay the energy bills, and maybe some will look at how they can consume less. There is even talk of a lower standards of living. I suppose it depends on whether those standards are related to our rational needs. Do we derive pleasure from keeping up those standards or have they become a way of life that we can no longer afford?

One of the benefits of having been on this planet for the best part of seven decades is being able to remember when motor cars were a luxury, and for those who had them, going out for a Sunday spin was regarded as a very affordable pleasure. I had thought that during my evening walk with Donald we would see an end to people taking that spin to the end of the road, but there are still a few who presumably derive some form of pleasure in driving there and back. By the time I was in secondary school people were taking their summer holidays abroad. I had even been on a sixteen day summer school trip around the Baltic on the Devonian (long since scrapped I’m sure), to include visits to Copenhagen, Gotland, Helsinki and Leningrad, all for the princely sum of £46. Most people now had a telephones, but we had to wait another two decades before the mobile phone started to take off. Unwieldy great things slung over the shoulder and now the young with their slim smart phones can’t imagine how I survive without one. As a child we didn’t have a television and any daytime viewing when staying with my grandparents would only reveal the test card. On Saturday there was Grandstand sport in the afternoon, and I remember well sitting through the interminable football results accompanied by my grandfather’s delightful whistling snore, while waiting for Circus Boy or the Lone Ranger to come on. There were only two channels and now there are hundreds, including playback and films on demand, but all that comes at a price. Today we can be entertained 100% of the time, no time for boredom or creativity.

 My Grandparents had no refrigerator but an outside larder always had a chicken or game birds awaiting plucking. Today my fridge is a slate Eureka meat safe made by Goddard and Son of London, which keeps things cool enough although ice creams and frozen foods do not figure on my shopping list. Some would say my refusal to change with the times has resulted in me missing out on life, but watching the antics of man from the safety of the side-lines has at times been hilarious. I still laugh, but not at the same things. The 21^st century was going to be wonderful; hard labour would be a thing of the past, automation and computer technology would permit us to have more free time for amusements. It turned out that playtime would come with a monthly subscription, and that we were no longer human beings but consumers. Life has become serious, no longer a laughing matter and for many it is a case of survival. Certainly our expectations of health care have taken a knock. We are learning to put up with aches and pains in the hopes that they will eventually disappear rather than develop into something more ominous. My neighbour still displays a large rainbow sign, saying stay safe and save the NHS, despite there being little signs of life and I’m left wondering if it might more to do with gay pride.

Living alone means I am able to carry out cut backs without worrying how it will affect anyone else. If the Rayburn oven is hot then bake a cake or make soda bread.  When I was recently told by one 84 year old neighbour that I should get a fridge, I had to remind him that he doesn’t have a washing machine and still treads it in the bath. We all have our eccentricities as well as our little excesses, but how we chose to cut back or adapt them is down to us. Some would say I carry little fat in all respects, but I prefer to look on that as simply another creative challenge. For more than thirty years now I have not bought any pickles, chutney or jam, and wherever I have lived a productive fruit and vegetable garden has been important.

  

Having no fridge means occasionally at this time of year the milk will turn. That doesn’t mean it’s wasted, and will often lead, via a little improvisation to something as yet I’ve never tried. So it was this week, when half way through a 4 pint container of turned milk that I made the remainder into cottage cheese. The whey separated with a gentle warming and I left the curds to drain. The following day I was making soda bread and decided to chuck in the cottage cheese. The resulting ugly loaf was a beautiful thing to behold, and a perfect accompaniment to the board bean soup for my Sunday lunch guests.

 

A REACTION TO BEING JUDGED

 

When I read in the local Stornoway Gazette that my home had reduced two of the three Scotland’s Home of the Year judges to tears it made me wonder what I had done. Had I perhaps revealed a little too much of myself, shown some tragic vulnerability, or displayed a tortured soul from some past event? Or was it simply the intensity of the care and attention I had put into my home, the love and beauty in those objects I have inherited, collected, restored or created myself. Out of the 73 object I counted hanging in the entrance hall, up the stairs and on the landing, I had created 45, while many of the others I had restored to their former glory, or simply framed. Many years ago during my first exhibition in France, a woman who wanted to buy a picture also wanted to tell me what she felt my paintings conveyed. She struggled for a moment trying to find the appropriate words and then said “ils sont triste”, they are sad. She purchased a small oil depicting the entrance to a field with brilliant yellow flowers, but I was struck by the accuracy of her perception. I learnt then that it is impossible for an artist to keep himself out of the picture.

When Anna Campbell-Jones, Michael Angus and Katie Spiers first entered my home I was there to greet them, not in person, but virtually imprinted wherever they looked. If I myself had been there the effect would have been less dramatic.

I am not what you’d call a successful artist, in the sense that my artwork is not snapped up immediately by the cognoscenti, or that galleries are clamouring to get my work onto their walls. My prices were seen recently as too modest for the London market and required tripling if they were to sell, and they did. However today many people simply don’t have any disposable income for anything beyond the strictly essential. Thankfully like most artists money is not the driving force behind my creativity. If I give a moment’s thought as to a piece I’m engaged on having some monetary worth it will more than likely turn out to be rubbish. So it was with my house, I never considered my restoration or interior decoration in the light of adding value, rather I did it because it was a rational need for my own comfort or that it simply gave me pleasure.

Is my work still sad? I hope not. Today it is full of colour and mischief. I remain in my isolation somewhat disconnected from the harshness and reality of the outside world, and in doing so retain much of my childlike naivety. There is nothing within my home that I have not acquired or made because I find it either, beautiful, useful or whimsical, and suppose that could also come under the heading love.

The fact that I am single has enabled me to follow pursue my aims without restraint, nobody to question my choices or suggest alternative. Like my father I will often use people as a sounding board to bounce my ideas off, but I will always end up doing what I want. Steve Adams who assisted me with a lot of the major work was masterful in going along with what I wanted, and would only give suggestion of how to best achieve that, surely the sign of a skilled builder.

I am glad that the judges came looking with their eyes and their hearts wide open to truly see and feel the depth of sentiment within these walls. Anna said she had never seen such an exceptional example of a home meeting the criteria of expressing the owner’s personality and taste, and of course love. “The overwhelming sense of the person who lives there communicated via the cornucopia of his incredible creations, from painted floors, to the embroidery, to the artwork on the walls and all by his own hand, what a genius!”

 

THE RHYTHM OF LIFE RETURNS

 

It was an understandable mistake, one that many others I’m sure would make, and which illustrates well my own doubts about taking part in BBC Scotland’s Home of the Year. In an article in the local Stornoway Gazette there appeared a photograph of my house with the caption “The house in Tolsta before restoration”. It should have read after restoration as the photograph was taken only a few weeks ago.

 I know for many this scruffy little croft house would look like it is still in need of a serious makeover. It was the 19^th century genius William Morris from the Arts and Craft movement who stated that after the restoration of a building it takes twenty five years for the effects of weathering and nature, as well as the patching up and general maintenance work before charm returns. I bought my little croft house because I saw it had charm and took every opportunity to retain it. For many I am sure the idea of restoration would include at the very least a coat of (look at me) white paint, but that is crossing over into the realms of renovation.

 As an artist I prefer to put paint onto canvas in pictorial form, where it will not require pressure cleaning every other year and repainting every ten years. Equally to live in a house with single glazed sash windows would seem foolish, but to have kept the original asbestos tiled roof must surely be bordering on insanity. The renovation of croft houses in the 60’s and 70’s meant pebble dash rendering, while today it’s that coat of white paint. There then follows a total disembowelling, where all the tripe is either burnt or carted off in a skip and a completely new interior is installed. In order to upgrade and insulate my own home it was necessary to carry out a similar process, but it was done carefully, numbering lengths of V lining so I could reinstate as much as possible. Practically all the floorboards were rotten but I managed to salvage a few. Over the summer months I camped out in the barn next door while the entire ground floor was dug out, damp proofed, insulated and reinstated. The following year I tackled the bedrooms so that now all the outside walls and roof space are insulated.

However, the judges were looking for BBC Scotland’s Home and not house of the year, and so the interior was what ruled the day. I had no choice when it came to decorating the interior, for that was denoted by my possessions as well as my art. I could have chucked my past in the nearest skip as many still do, and ordered a load of flat pack rubbish, but then I’m not that stupid. While many enjoy the minimalist look, I am simply not made that way. I create primarily for my own amusement and to decorate my own home. The objects I live with are either inherited, recued, or home-made. Many of my age group have tried and failed to pass on their furniture to their children when scaling down, only then to purchase modern furniture. Teenage influencers are the saddest of people, but those who discard their past need therapy. A vast amount of our heritage has been put into landfill over the past twenty year as sound, solid furniture was labelled as brown. Even with a profusion of antique bargain hunting TV programs the ignorance grew and there was nothing that could stop the lemming like behaviour of the masses to buy the new and inferior. For many I am sure the home I have created is a nightmare of clutter and certainly not deserving of any award let alone the accolade of Home of the year. What appeared on the BBC Scotland’s program was simply a visual record, an outer veneer, which obviously could not convey the stories that lay behind every object. I was impressed that the three judges, even without knowing any of these stories were able to sense that depth of history as well as the amount of my own creativity. It is indeed rare to see such an interior and some would more than likely be assuming to pay an entrance fee to see the like. A common question is who does the dusting? Well obviously I do, and although that is perhaps a twice yearly event, it is one I take great pleasure in. I get distracted by each object and the memories they hold, so dusting can take days. I enjoy the annual collection of brass on the kitchen table, and the smell of metal polish that takes me back to my childhood and helping my mother. Washing the blue and white plates in the kitchen is also a yearly event as a solid fuel Rayburn does create dust. When the plate rack is full it reminds me of my father and how the only time I ever saw him at the kitchen sink was when he returned from a day at an auction and would carefully wash his purchases. I have a vacuum cleaner but it gets sparing use as I find sweeping the wooded floors sufficient, and brushing the stairs carpet is particularly enjoyable in that I can take a leisurely look at the close hung images. Being fully connected with every item within my home is what makes it home. While my father was a collector, I am a displayer, not like the peacock who wants to impress the world but simply, and some would say selfishly to please myself. A recent visiting friend described it as feeling safe and perhaps that is all that we should require, and why it makes it all the more shocking to see the destruction of peoples homes.

The judges made only a brief mention of seeing no modern technology, and I found that refreshing to see that its absence didn’t immediately freak them out. I live without television, internet connection or phone, which provides me with the peace and calm that I require. I realised many years ago that I wouldn’t be the person to change world events, and so with that knowledge I have preferred to remain blissfully ignorant. It is said that artists must if nothing else attempt to depict and relate to the present day, and while some are drawn to comment or be influenced by the terrible things that come to pass in our ever more connected world, I, in my insular ignorance, create whatever pleases me. Some would say I’m not even an artist, and like most people I find it difficult to comprehend art speak. (A system of queer relation, an algorithm of data, anonymise the identity of their referent, a practice of creative etymology, bearing witness to the psycho-sexual scene of the self.)  No, it doesn’t matter how many times I read such things, it still makes no sense.

So, how much did you win? That’s been the first question some people have asked, for surely there must be some sort of prize money. I explain that it’s simply the accolade and the tastefully carved slate plaque to prove it. Winning BBC Scotland’s Home of the Year for 2022 leaves me wondering what one is supposed to do with an accolade. There seems no appropriate place on my packed walls for the plaque, and it seems premature to be offering it up for sale on eBay, not that I would know how to go about that. 

So for now it’ll go back in the drawer, and I will head out to the moor to cut some peat, later I’ll return to my stitching project and everything will return to normal.   

Gardening in the Outer Hebrides. (Hope and small rewards)

 

Fifteen years ago, when I first started to think about planting a garden and contemplating the possibilities of growing a few vegetables it often seemed an impossible task. My neighbour Muriel King told me anything would grow as long as you could provide protection. She meant from the salt laden easterly winds, and the predominant north westerly, and she was referring to trees and shrubs. So, my first priority was to get anything that would stand up to those conditions. I planted willow and hedging shrubs mixed with pine, spruce, sycamore, birch, beech, mountain ash, hornbeam and alders plus. Some survived and some didn’t, but after a decade I had clumps of growth and even nesting birds. My aim was not to cocoon myself in greenery since that would only lead to problems with the midges come summer time. A typical garden on the Outer Hebrides would have consisted of some well-maintained grass, and that style of gardening in exposed conditions is still visible here on Lewis. I am fortunate in not only having a good depth of soil, but also having a little protection from existing buildings and the lie of the land. My dream of a vegetable garden is to step immediately from the house into it, no fancy flower beds and ornamentation simply step directly into rational practicality, preferably visible form the kitchen window. The choice here was made for me by the best soil, and so I started a veg garden down below the barn, however from the kitchen window I do have a wonderful display of kale in full bloom. Digging was hard going since at one point I ran into the foundations of what could have been the old blackhouse plus a stone paved area. The sandy loam was free draining but with the high annual rainfall it would require regular fertilising. It was also open to the east and those brutal bitter spring winds. I managed to get blackcurrants established and a health row of rhubarb. The results were worthwhile but mixed. Pests such as cabbage root fly would devastate my efforts and one summer storm was so strong it literally blew the cabbages out of the ground. I tried not to be disheartened and rejoiced at the most minor of success.  A small bowl of strawberries, the height of luxury. The provisions cupboard soon started to fill up with blackcurrant and rhubarb jam, and while French beans were a waste of time, mange tout peas if protected did quite well. There was no problem with potatoes, turnips and beetroot and my shopping trips into Stornoway became less frequent. In long dry summer of 2021 I had to water, but the results were wonderful and I was able to give away produce to neighbours. It was the first time I’d grown anything under mesh and it certainly cured the root fly problem.

So earlier on this year I started to clear new ground extending the original plot and creating more cultivation area at the back of the house. Hope is always a strong incentive when it comes to gardening, but it’s important not to set those hopes too high. I’d saved some potatoes from last year, but also bought pink fur apple potatoes for a change. April was promising and the soil easy to dig and clean, however all that changed in May. This is the peat cutting season and I was glad I’d managed to get over half done by the end of April. The rain seemed constant and then it turned cold, and I mean seriously cold to the point that the seed simply would not germinate. I searched along the rows of parsnips managing to discover amongst the weeds the odd plant, but where there should have been fifty there was five. Turnips were the same and swedes simply refused to show. I replanted but with no better results. It was simply too cold. Beetroot and chard germinated but then stood still as if in total shock. I’d planted peas, courgettes and greens inside and wondered when I could risk putting them outside. The courgettes went under plastic on the site of the old compost heap and romped away, and the cabbages went under protective mesh. By the end of the week three quarters of the cabbages had been felled, not eaten, but simply felled at ground level. On investigation I found leather jackets just below the surface. I worked a trowel through the soil and took sadistic pleasure in squishing every last one I found. I did this twice before the felling ceased. I’ve done a second sowing, but while the weather remains so cold there seems little point in rushing to plant them out.

 On the fruit side the currants flowered quite well after a serious pruning last autumn. I had hoped to get more flowers lower down on the new growth but at least they didn’t get burn off like last spring. I may have a crop that merits netting this year. The strawberries up behind the house looked dead, but after cleaning and covering with a makeshift tunnel made from piping and a mattress plastic bag they soon started to recover. They have flowered and today I picked my first very small bowl of strawberries. Such small rewards are what keep my hopes up and hope along with ingenuity is much in need when it comes to gardening this far north.    

A TRIUMPH OF TULIPS

 

Two year ago I planted some tulip bulbs to brighten up the rough patch of grass that grows where the original entrance used to be. The ground is gritty and hardly merits the term soil, which at least means that the meagre grass hardly ever needs cutting. Just as well as I’ve never own a lawn mower. This spring there has been a good showing to the point that I’m almost embarrassed by the vivid violence of such brash primary red that would seem more at home in an urban or town setting. Those petals with the luscious texture of the finest satin have no place in a landscape of heather and heath, and yet that very out of place positioning renders them the more remarkable. They have taken their time in coming into bloom and are unlikely to last long with the lashing of wind and rain we are promised this week, so I sat a while on the bench out front and enjoyed. 

The tulip in native to Central Asia and Caucuses with 14diffwerent species growing wild in Turkey. From the 16^th century onward the tulip became an integral part of Ottoman culture as can be seen across all forms of the decorative arts. The obsession with tulips spanned the reign of Sultan Ahmed III (1703-30) and became known as the tulip era. In Turkey and later in Holland laws were enacted to control speculation. In England and the west tulips with round petals were preferred while the Turks only rated the dagger shaped petals. Tulips appear in Dutch still life oil paintings throughout the 17^th century with masterpieces by Ambosius Bosschaert and Hans Bollongier and the standardised tree form of tulip made popular by illustrations in books such as Crispyn de Passe’s Horttus Floidus, and was used well into the 19^th century. 

Forty years ago a pair of such painting turned up in a house sale down in Cornwall. From the estimated price I thought I might stand a chance of buying them. I was prepared to go up to £10,000 pounds but never even raised my hands as they eventually sold for £21,000. I’ve often found that not being able to buy or more importantly afford something has inspired me to make it myself. In my own homage to the tulips I used a style reminiscent of those 17^th century Dutch botanical painters.              

UN BON GROS DODO

 

I wasn’t totally sure if the young man on the checkout in Tesco’s had been trained to ask me what I had planned for the rest of my day, or if he was genuinely interested to know. Since he had enquired so politely I felt I could at least inform him of what I would be doing on my return home.

“I’ll be stitching a Dodo”, I said.

He looked puzzled, so I added “You did ask”. As I loaded my purchases into my bag I endeavoured to expand a little on what was entailed in my particular complex form of embroidery, but it only seem to add to his confusion. I smiled politely behind my face mask and mumbled my thanks before heading off to the bus station and home. I had started the embroidery the previous day and was keen now to see how my idea for stitching feathers rather than fur would turn out.

 I had found an old engraving of a dodo in the 1889 edition of Chambers illustrated encyclopaedias and had done more research on line to arrive at a satisfactory image. I read early description of this comical and most cumbersome of birds in Oliver Goldsmith’s History of the earth and animated nature as being the most unwieldy and inactive of all nature. Everything about the dodo seem to contradict all the attributes that man had assigned to bird life.  Its body is massive, almost round, and covered in grey feathers. It is only just supported on two short thick legs, like pillars, while its head and neck rise from it in a manner truly grotesque.  Native of Mauritius, the French called it the nauseous bird, not only because of its appearance but its bad taste of flesh. Perhaps they simply hadn’t discovered the correct way to cook it for succeeding visitors reported its flesh to be good and wholesome eating. It was said that three or four dodos were enough to dine a hundred men. It is thought that it became extinct around 1680. There were however some interesting observations made before this took place. One was that it was not possible to domesticate them as during captivity they shed tears and eventually died. The nest of the dodo was made from a heap of palm leaves and only a single egg was laid. Each bird took it in turns to sit during an incubation period of seven weeks as well as protecting the chick when born. Any other dodo coming within 200 yards was chased away. The males would only chase away other males and female would only chase females.  In the gizzard of all birds a stone was found the size of a hen’s egg and it was concluded that they were born with this stone as even young birds had it. They also discovered that these stones made extremely good knife sharpeners and were used in preference to any other.

The images I found were many, ranging from the cartoon character cuddly toys to all possible forms of exaggeration. Using a compilation of the most realistic images along with various descriptions dating from the late 17^th century I produced a drawing, which although remaining comical also does bare some resemblance to an actual dodo. Having transferred this onto white cotton fabric I began stitching, firstly with the tail, then moving on to the separate wing and drumstick leg, which would be attached to the main bird and padded out before then cutting out the entire embroidered bird. To create a feathered appearance I used a rough fishbone stitch that I would normally use for leaves. It seemed to work well, particularly when completed and padded out on the linen support canvas. The rough background drawing was then transfer to the canvas, and although this is never the definitive image it does serve as a guide for the embroidery that will constitute several tens of thousands of stiches. 

When tackling this sort of work I like to concentrate on a small area and finish it, rather than, say concentrating on one colour as one might when stitching a cross stitch kit. The image remained relatively fluid and would also have some raised areas, which were again stitched separately on an embroidery hoop. I wanted to keep most of the background as flat as possible to emphasize the rotundness of the dodo, but would allow some raised work in the foreground. As usual I start stitching at the top with the sky and trees. The sky was mostly in long-stitch, while the clouds and tree foliage were all in half French knots in order to keep the detail small enough to convey depth. This knot is very similar to a full French knot but goes only once around the needle before completion to produce a much smaller knotted stitch. I restricted the trees to three distinct but unknown species, which would leave me with plenty of opportunity to incorporate different varieties of green wools when it came to the foreground. It is a question of contrasting tones as well as colours which eventually gives depth. By the time I reached the half way stage I had passed from sky through the distant hills and forest to the middle foreground. In order again to give depth I introduced some water behind the bird, much as I had done with the Ocelot, separating it from the forested area. Once complete the needlework was stretched and box framed before setting it within the old gilt frame. I had right from the start decided to frame the dodo using one of my old recuperated gilt picture frames. Although in a somewhat decrepit state it was of good depth and a similar size to the French gilt framed needlework it would replace that hung above the headboard of the half tester bed. Any French toddler would immediately understand why I intended to hang a stumpwork embroidery of a dodo above the head of the sleeper. In French dodo translates as dodo, but also beddy-byes, un bon gros dodo- a nice long sleep.