Holy Cow
Ha! I knew I had a picture of a south Indian cow somewhere (see yesterday’s post) and after rummaging through my files found this one, which was taken in Mysore. Cute, isn’t she?
There is something rather flattering about a friendly cow and being able to pat one is the cherry on top, since they usually amble away or shake their heads before you reach them. I distinctly recall patting a similar but much more decorated cow in Mumbai – it left me with a charming deposit of saliva, cud and indigo- and magenta-coloured dye all over my arm for the rest of the day. Not what one expects from a well-intentioned scratch behind the ears. It does however bring me to this picture, also from Mysore:
And this one, from the market in that city:
Shoreditched-based designer Ella Doran has, I think, used a similar but better picture of bangles to good effect on a tray or cushion cover. I love the exquisite place mats, blinds, cushion covers, mugs and such she produces, and her shop is worth a visit. If you can’t travel all the way to east London, read her blog here.
Finally, just because I can, a garland maker in Pondicherry:
Happy Diwali, Everyone
The Hindu festival of light, Diwali, starts today. I used this as reason to walk along Tooting High Road last night to buy gulab jamen and a piece of almond and pistachio burfi from one of the sweet shops in what feels like microcosm of the Subcontinent.
Ok, so the sweetmaker was actually Pakistani, Muslim and keen to discuss the ascent of Western culture in Lahore, but the Diwali sentiment was there.
He explained that because cows are sacred in southern India, buffalo milk, rather than cow’s milk, is used to make sweets there. Does anyone know if that’s true? There are undoubtedly plenty of buffalo in southern India but I’ve never heard of that before. In Pakistan, obviously, it isn’t an issue.
He also muttered about the poor quality milk in England; poor man, he must be missing home.
I didn’t have my camera with me so no pictures of burfi. Instead, this one of a woman leaving an offering in the most important of Hindu sites, the Sri Meenakshi temple in Madurai, India. William Dalrymple wrote an elegant piece about it in the The Age of Kali. Do read it if you have a chance.
Kew Sights
To Kew a few days ago. It was falling leaves, squirrels manically preparing for hibernation, a woodpecker or two, chestnuts on the ground, long shadows – and these Rudbeckia, some of the last flowers to leave the summer party. They remind me a little of young celebs exiting West End clubs at three in the morning, the pictures of which one sees in the free-sheets, only the flowers wear their smudged mascara and crumpled dresses rather more elegantly.
And this detail on the outside of the Temperate House:
The angle is peculiar because, being shorter rather than taller, I was looking up at it. A step ladder might have been useful but who wants to lug a step ladder around Kew when there are important things like lemon drizzle cake to be had in the tea room.
Export Quality
Very pleased to see that the new Anthropologie store – it’s an American chain, it’s ok not to say shop, I think – on Regent Street is almost complete. I can’t wait for it to open, especially since one of my favourite ceramicists, Mick Haigh, has been working like mad since March to complete an order for it.
Mick lives with his wife, Sally, and young son in a hamlet surrounded by exquisite hills tattooed with forest and farmland in the depths of the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, South Africa. He works from a tiny wattle-and-daub studio that he built at the bottom of the garden with his son and, if you look carefully, you can see their handprints on the mud walls of the building.
It’s about as close to stardom as anyone in the valley wants to get: property rarely comes up for sale and, if you didn’t know where you were going, you could miss the turn-off to the cluster of houses and paddocks and carry on driving for forty or fifty kilometres, before reaching a dead-end at the foot of the Drakensberg mountains without seeing anyone except, perhaps, a Zulu herdsman on horseback.
Yet over the past few years Mick’s ceramics have beaten a path from that tiny studio to the local post office and to the world beyond: Cape Town, Johannesburg, New York, Paris, Eindhoven, Stavanger, and now Regent Street.
In the small cafe Sally runs in the nearest village there is, propped up against some of some of Mick’s pieces, a note from Terence Conran inviting him to dinner, although Mick, I expect, would be happiest left to make pots in the valley.
“I work with mud: pale mud, dark mud, any kind of mud. I’ve never planned anything – it’s just kind of happened for me,” he told me in an interview I wrote for House and Garden magazine earlier this year. I think it’s an example of globalisation at its best.
leave a comment