Aquamanilia (14)

I am proofreading a book for the Getty Museum called Guidelines for the Technical Examination of Bronze Sculpture. It is, as you might imagine, a bit of a slog, with chapters on such scintillating topics as casting processes, casting defects, repairs, tool marks, gilding and plating, and patina, never mind "Radiography and Tomography for the Visualization of the Metal Wall and the Interior." So I was happy today to get past the technical discussions and into a handful of case studies, including "Exquisite Objects, Prodigious Technique: Aquamanilia, Vessels of the European Middle Ages." The featured object there was a little German lion from the twelfth century:

I was smitten! As the text explains, 

Aquamanilia are zoomorphic or anthropomorphic vessels for the washing of hands at the table. Cast from copper alloys, they emerged as a distinct artistic form in the twelfth century in Lower Saxony and continued to be fabricated in various areas of Germany for the next three centuries. They were filled via lidded openings, generally at the tops of the animal’s or rider’s head, with the spouts either integrally cast as part of the figure’s mouth or separately fabricated as a spigot and mechanically set into its chest.

Ritual hand washing was a key part of the Mass in medieval times. More practically, these vessels were also used at mealtime in monastic refectories and in the homes of nobility—hand washing being an important hygienic practice in days of shared dishes and few utensils. The little lion above would have been picked up and the water poured out of his mouth, while the ones below with spigots would have sat on the table, stationary.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has one of the best collections of aquamanilia. Here are a few of them. I find them delightful. (Click to see large. And if you want to see other views and close-ups of these vessels, or other examples of aquamanilia, go to the Met page.)

Horse, Nuremberg, ca. 1400

Rooster, Lower Saxony, Germany, 1200s

Young Falconer on Horseback, Lower Saxony,
Germany, 1200s (the left hand once supported a falcon)

Griffin, Nuremberg, 1425–50

Dragon, North German, ca. 1200

Unicorn, Nuremberg, 1425–50

Samson and the Lion, Northern European, 1380–1400

Aristotle and Phyllis, South Netherlandish,
late 14th or early 15th century
From the Met's description: "The subject of this
celebrated example is the moralizing legend of
Aristotle and Phyllis, which achieved popularity in the
late Middle Ages. Aristotle, the Greek philosopher and tutor
of Alexander the Great, allowed himself to be humiliated
by the seductive Phyllis as a lesson to the young ruler,
who had succumbed to her wiles and neglected the affairs of state.
Encouraging Alexander to witness his folly, Aristotle explained
that if he, an old man, could be so easily deceived, the potential
consequences for a young man were even more perilous.
The ribald subject indicates that this aquamanile was made
for a domestic setting, where it would have doubled as an object of
entertainment for guests at the table."

These vessels remind me of the hedgehog aryballoi (ancient Greek perfume containers) I posted about a while back. Here's the link, if you missed them. They still make me smile!

Book Report: The Long Way Home (13)

26. Louise Penny, The Long Way Home (2014) (11/18/22)

This is Penny's tenth book (and my fourth this year), and a bit of a departure in that the only dead body does not appear until the final pages. The plot involves a search for the artist Peter Morrow, one of the regular Three Pines characters and the husband of Clara Morrow, also an artist—who in a previous book eclipsed Peter in her artistic fame. Their marriage got rocky, and she suggested they separate, to come together again after a year. Only he doesn't show up. Meanwhile, Chief Inspector Gamache has retired as head of homicide (as of book #9) and moved to Three Pines, and he gets drawn into the mystery, along with his sidekick, Jean-Guy Beauvoir. They start to trace Peter's whereabouts, which takes them, and various other characters, hither and yon: Québec City, Toronto, the tiny St. Lawrence River town of Baie-Saint-Jean, and ultimately the wild far east of the province on a wild boat ride. Jealousy is also a character. As is love.

It was a fine book, though I would not have found it as engaging were it not for Penny's exposition on topics outside the plot proper. To wit: Canadian art and a wacky garden in Dumfries, Scotland, which Peter visits on his travels as he tries to find himself. In an earlier book, Penny introduced Emily Carr, whom I'd never heard of, and who has since become a favorite of mine. In The Long Way Home I learned about Clarence Gagnon and Tom Thomson, whose work is beautiful and evocative—full of grace as one character puts it with regard to Gagnon. I also enjoyed learning about the Garden of Cosmic Speculation, and if I can remember (which I will probably not), one day I'd love to find myself near Dumfries in early May so I can visit on its one open day of the year.

Here's a passage from the book:

The mind, [Gamache] knew, really was its own place. Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
     Gamache was pretty sure that's what Peter Morrow had done. He'd turned heaven into hell. And as a result, he'd been kicked out. Paradise Lost.
     But Peter Morrow wasn't Lucifer, the fallen angel. He was just a troubled man who lived in his head, not realizing that Paradise was only ever found in the heart. Unfortunately for Peter, feelings lived there too. And they were almost always messy. Peter Morrow did not like messes.
     Armand laughed as he remembered the conversation from the night before.
     It was how Clara had described her first attempt at painting. No, not a mess, it was something else. A dog's breakfast. Ruth had called it that and Clara had agreed. Ruth tried to capture feelings in her poetry. Clara tried with color and subject to give form to feelings.
     It was messy. Unruly. Risky. Scary. So much could go wrong. Failure was always close at hand. But so was brilliance.
     Peter Morrow took no risks. He neither failed nor succeeded. There were no valleys, but neither were there mountains. Peter's landscape was flat. An endless, predictable desert.
     How shattering it must have been, then, to have played it safe all his life and been expelled anyway. From home. From his career.
     What would a person do when the tried-and-true was no longer true?

Clarence Gagnon, artist (12)

A couple of years ago while reading a Louise Penny book, I encountered an artist new to me, Emily Carr, whom I loved. (So much so that I bought a jigsaw puzzle featuring an image of hers, which was so hard it took me two years to finish!) I am now reading another book by Penny, The Long Way Home, and again she is featuring a Canadian artist, this time the Québecois Clarence Gagnon (1881–1942), a painter, draftsman, engraver, and illustrator. He is best known for his Impressionist images of the Baie Saint-Paul region of Charlevoix, along the St. Lawrence River (where in the book, Gamache & Co. are searching for the Three Pines artist Peter Morrow, who has disappeared, leaving tantalizing traces and clues). 

In 1913 Gagnon was given a solo show in Paris, Paysage d’hiver dans les montagnes des Laurentides au Canada, the first time a living Canadian artist was featured in that city. "Mark[ing] him as a painter with his own interpretation of the Canadian winter and also as a painter known for his views of habitant life" (Wikipedia), the show was a turning point for him and his career. Afterward, according to the National Gallery of Canada, "Gagnon portrayed the Canadian landscape almost exclusively, and generally in wintertime. He invented a new type of landscape—a winter world composed of valleys and mountains, of sharp contrasts of light and shadow, of vivid colours, and of sinuous lines. He ground his own paints, and from 1916 his palette consisted of pure white, reds, blues and yellows." Although he spent many years bouncing back and forth between Québec and Europe, especially France, Canada remained his heart's true subject. In 1931, while living in Paris, he wrote:

It was not the over-sensitivity of the misunderstood that made me move to Paris. . . . Over there, I paint only Canadian subjects, I dream only of Canada. The motif remains fixed in my mind, and I don't allow myself to be captivated by the charms of a new landscape. In Switzerland, Scandinavia—everywhere, I recall my French Canada.

Penny describes his work like this: People from Québec who viewed Gagnon's work

looked about to burst into tears. And unsuspected yearning uncovered, discovered. For a simpler time and a simpler life. Before Internet, and climate change, and terrorism. When neighbors worked together, and separation was not a topic or an issue or wise.
     Yet the Gagnon paintings weren't idealized images of country life. They showed hardship. But they also showed such beauty, such peace, that the paintings, and the people looking at them, ached

Here are some of his works, in no real order, except that Europe follows Canada. I still need to rustle up a date or two. (Click to see them large on black.)

Baie Saint-Paul, c. 1914–17

Canadian Village, Grey Day

La carriole rouge

Evening on the North Shore

Laurentian Village, 1927

In the Laurentians, Winter, 1910

Jour de boucherie, Baie Saint-Paul, 1923

Le train en hiver

Moonrise, 1909

The Old Mill, or Automne dans Charlevoix

Winter Landscape at Sunset

 

[Venice]

Mont St-Michel Morning, 1907

Farmyard, France

Canal du Loing, 1908

Dover Mountains, Norway 1934

River Vefsna, Helgeland, Norway

And for something completely different:

Katherine, 1907

Katherine, 1908

Oracles (11)

The other morning my sister-in-law Patty came downstairs and said, "I think we should consult an oracle." She had just been at a weeklong manuscript workshop and had gotten feedback indicating that she needed to tear her manuscript apart and put it back together again in a different way. She was game: she likes revision. But she thought maybe some "guidance" could be useful at this juncture in her process.

It just so happens, I have oracles! The I Ching, Tarot cards (two versions), Nordic runes, Hawaiian mana cards, and Native American medicine cards. I think that sort of thing is fun. I put absolutely no stock in it, short of the generic wisdom that is offered up. But it is amusing.

The coins we used, from 1831 (Lady
Liberty), 2010 (an uncirculated
Lincoln dollar), and 1965 (the JFK
silver half dollar)

We started that morning with the I Ching, tossing three coins: heads get 3 points, tails 2. You add them up, and odds render a solid line, evens a broken one; 6s and 9s are "changing" lines. Repeat six times. You then use a table to arrive at a specific hexagram/meaning. The changing lines render a second hexagram, to fill out the oracle's advice.

And I was very pleased with my result: all solid lines! Translating to (1) 乾 qián, the Creative. (The following is a quote from the book I use.)

This hexagram signals a time when the fundamental creative power of the universe is available to you. An unrestricted outpouring of benevolent energy from the heavens makes possible profound progress for those who are conscientiously following proper principles.
     Frantic activity is not in order. Your responsibility instead is to be open and receptive to the Higher Power, allowing it to guide your actions. By allowing inferior thoughts and habits to pass away, you make room for an expansion of your superior qualities, which leads inevitably to good fortune. . . .
     Your attitude toward the Sage is most important. Alertness and receptiveness are paramount. To receive the powerful assistance of the Creative, remain humble, patient, accepting, and responsive. Careful attention to truth brings vast rewards at this time. 

Resisting "the compulsions of the ego," following that which flows naturally from your attention, and letting go of preconceived notions about your proper path—these are key. (All this sounds like play to me.)

The two changing lines in my throws led to (50) 鼎 ding, the Caldron, which also instructs one to give up the incessant demands of the ego—fears, desires, strategies to control—and, rather than resisting life, enter into a conversation with the Sage (which I choose to interpret as the creative forces around us). Basically, remain open.

So yeah, okay: remain open and play! That's good advice any day.

Alastair Crowley's Fool

The next day, I chose a simple Tarot spread. A central card there, corresponding to "the future, or that which is just beginning," was one of my favorites: the Fool—the first (or 0th) card in the deck. And what does he signify? The open mind of innocence. Beginner's mind. The freedom to explore without preconceived notions. "Give in, dare to leap, even if fear attempts to hold you back. Trust the voice from within your heart."

It's a theme! And one I am very happy to pursue.

Patty's, meanwhile, was about flowing water, a spring transforming into a creek, then a river, carving a mountain. Also very apt.

And so: onward!

The movies (10)

Today we went to the movie theater for the first time in... years. I can't actually remember the last time I sat in a movie theater, or what I saw. It was certainly pre-Covid, so maybe sometime in late 2019, or possibly January 2020? What did we see? Who knows. I didn't go to the movies all that often even in the "before times." I do remember seeing Harriet, Knives Out, Little Women, Ford v. Ferrari, and maybe Parasite, all 2019, in the theater, to name a few. (I had a little assist from Google to garner those titles.)

So let me just file away in some secure memory place (like this blog) today's movie, The Banshees of Inisherin, directed by Martin McDonagh and starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, as my first movie-movie in quite a while. It was excellent, if hard. It's quiet and slow. The performances are riveting, the buildup of tension masterful. McDonagh's In Bruges, also with Farrell and Gleeson, is one of my favorite films, and it was a pleasure to watch the two actors again; and Kerry Condon, who plays the Farrell character's sister, is wonderful, as is the stage actor Barry Keoghan, who plays the village dimwit. Never mind Jenny the donkey. I do love going to the movies, the big screen experience. This was a good, moody one to get that started up again. My sister-in-law Patty called it a fable, and I think that's about right.

Also today, I made my annual Portuguese bean soup and fried rice. After the movie, the three of us visited the Pacific Grove Butterfly Sanctuary, where the monarchs were fluttering in to roost on the pines in dense orangish-brown clusters. We walked the dog. And we did divinations with medicine and Tarot cards. It was a fine, memorable day.

Cat (9)

Yesterday during a slow spell while volunteering, I checked my email. And there I saw a post from my friend Greg that caused my heart to skip a beat. It was titled "i don't know what i'll do tomorrow," and the first sentence was, "The cat is dead."

Although I don't know Greg for real (he's a FB friend), I interact with him every day—literally, now that we have Wordle. He hosts a little daily gathering where a good two dozen of us meet and share our results, together with a sprinkling of wisdom or humor or some pithy quote. But even before Wordle, I'd seek him out, whether on FB, his blog, or Instagram, for his eclectic intelligence and artistry. He is a photographer, and he regularly shares a distinctive view of the area around his home of Des Moines, Iowa—or some more artistic vision by his alter ego Knuckles Dobrovic. He's politically active, and his blog often presents commentary on something in the news or made-up conversations between such personages as "average citizen" and "right-wing conspiracy mongerer," or "the media" and "Herschel Walker." He writes about popular culture (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and serious literature (Tolstoy), about murder and geocaching, about etymology and espionage. I'm not sure when I started following him—I'm guessing around 2012: I "met" him through another Flickr/FB friend whom I've also never met in person—but I've enjoyed the journey. He's erudite and funny and trenchant.

And as long as I've known him, he's had a cat, whom he called "the cat." Though it turns out, her name was actually Abby. He only revealed that yesterday. He's devoted a couple of his blog posts to her. One involved their daily "check of the perimeter": their first-thing ritual of standing at the sliding glass door together looking out. But he mentioned her a lot, especially her lap habit. Much of his indoor activity seemed to be dictated by the cat.

In any case, you know how some people you come to identify with, and their pets too? Yeah. (Though Greg would never call the cat a pet. She was an independent spirit.)

Here's a couple more photos of the cat, and finally the T. S. Eliot poem about the naming of cats—in honor of Abby.

The Naming of Cats

T. S. Eliot

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
     It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
     Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey—
     All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
     Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter—
     But all of them sensible everyday names,
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,
     A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
     Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
     Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum—
     Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
     And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover—
     But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
     The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
     Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
          His ineffable effable
          Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular name.

Volunteering (8)

This afternoon I spent a few hours with nine other wilderness rangers working in the Big Sur International Marathon (BSIM) warehouse moving stuff around—out of trucks and into the warehouse, stacking the stuff on pallets, and watching Christian move it all, with his forklift, up onto shelves. 

The BSIM had its annual half-marathon this morning, so we were putting things back in place, where it will all sit waiting for next April's full marathon (and associated events: a 21-mile power walk, a 26-mile relay, a 5K run, and various walks). The stuff included many, many boxes of shirts (which you would't think would have a shelf life, would you? aren't they dated?), many, many boxes of plastic cups, traffic cones, stanchions, various sorts of signage, medal racks, bleachers—and more. Turns out, mounting a big race (the marathon proper attracts 4,500 participants) requires a lot of stuff. Here are some photos I took in the warehouse.

That's Christian in his forklift. He was delightful to watch.

The reason we helped out is that the BSIM gave us wilderness rangers a grant of $5,000. This was payback—or was it paying forward? In any case, it was a small example of community working together.