Tuesday, 8 April 2025
Mr Potter - the last lone man
Probably no one in the Five Towns takes a conscious pride in the antiquity of the potter’s craft, nor in its unique and intimate relation to human life, alike civilised and uncivilised. Man hardened clay into a bowl before he spun flax and made a garment, and the last lone man will want an earthen vessel after he has abandoned his ruined house for a cave, and his woven rags for an animal’s skin. This supremacy of the most ancient of crafts is in the secret nature of things, and cannot be explained.
Arnold Bennett - Anna of the Five Towns (1902)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
It's odd and strangely endearing how this and other crafts are kept alive by enthusiasts who are mainly middle class. To see potters, bodgers, weavers, flint knappers and the like is seeing an anchor to the past. The same applies to those videos you occasionally post where blokes display their love for early engineering.
It's all still there, although I remember reading that we have forgotten the skills that got men to the moon.
Sam - yes it is all still there and we need it as an anchor to the past. I don't know about the skills that got men to the moon, but something was lost, courage, enthusiasm or drive, but something.
Post a Comment