Showing posts with label carvings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label carvings. Show all posts

Wednesday, 21 December 2022

Number 31 21.12.2022

 

Ford Anglia - courtesy the internet.


Ford Anglia - courtesy the internet. 

My last day of the commitment to write everyday for my blog from 21 November 2022 is today. I’ve made it. And I do hope that you have enjoyed it.

It was raining during the night; at present it is not raining; the clouds promise more rain. The forecast predicts thunder storms in the afternoon. Eventually it became the sun was blazing away and all of a sudden it disappeared behind curtains and you guessed it: it started raining again. As I am typing away, it is raining.


My treasure chest

Yesterday my friend showed me his museum in the making. He’s got an impressive array of things that he’s kept since childhood days. His late mother collected various things; the most impressive to my mind anyhow, is her collection of Dinky toy cars, and Corgi cars and other makes I don’t even know existed. As a young boy he assembled lots of plastic toys and kept it. Now, it can go into his museum. One piece struck me as rather sentimental: a Ford Anglia. Yes, the one with the back window that slants diagonally from top to bottom; that was the “guarantee” that not a single raindrop would ever fall on that back window!! Now I regret not taking any photos in his archives!! It is a real treasure house waiting to be put in place. A place he and his grandchildren will enjoy. A place where he can show them magazines from his youth, he kept from 1960’s. A place where he can tell stories and anecdotes from his early youth – stories that he had forgotten and yet that re-surfaced when working with this stuff.

There is even a fair number of Nordic books, inter alia, a Nordic dictionary which is as ancient as Norway is.

During his army training he served in the Pantzer corps. To crown it, he kept his note books, paging thru slowly and reminiscing. Detailed sketches in his own hand of military weaponry with detailed descriptions alongside. And cartoons of his lecturers. An old radio with a makeshift coat hanger making do as an antenna – and the story behind that radio that came all the way from the Netherlands when his wife and family when they relocated to South Africa.

The Queen and King of the Netherlands glares gloomily out of an old colour photograph with a shattered glass cover. Boxes full of model cars that will make your mouth to water; cars stacked on top of one the other. It is a colourful array of shapes, metal, plastic and rubber wheels. A mishmash of old dated toys – the real value lies inside him.

I was looking eagerly to see an old school report of my friend [without success]. He showed me some of his diaries his parents gave him; he paged thru and started reading some of his write-ups: “I woke up this morning. Got dressed. Had breakfast. Went to school. Came back. Had a conversation with my mom. I had a nice day.” He was about 9 at the time; how precious. Virginia Wolf would have confronted him about the say so: “I had a nice day.” No, she would say. Where exactly did you go to? School? Which school? Who was your teacher? What exactly did you read? Did you understand everything you read? If not, why not? So, Virginia would drag a weird and wonderful story out of this 9-year-old.

The perennial question remains: how will you preserve your legacy? What will you preserve/keep alive for your descendants, if anything at all?

In the mean time we keep going and we keep on making stuff.

Have you read my Number 26? The stories Leendert Joubert wrote? He is passionate about a walking stick! Not just any old walking stick. Not a walking stick that you bought when you were on a very expensive overseas trip. This walking stick evolved from its former life as a fishing rod. Not just any old fishing rod. It was Leendert’s father’s rod. He says about it:

“Another example is the cane walking stick, that originally was my father's fishing rod. Anybody can make a walking stick from a piece of cane for less than twenty rand, but mine is not for sale for any amount of money. And still, I doubt if any of my children would want it. It just won't fit in with their lifestyles or living conditions.”

Leendert’s dad had a unique influence on him: he left him a walking stick that no money can buy. By the way, Leendert who made that walking stick? When?

The abbot of the Coptic Church in Johannesburg once gave me a wooden cross and this I keep in a special red leather covered box with other stuff.




Coelacanth and other carvings.

You can see some of my soapstone carvings: the coelacanth’s tail, a snail, a crab, a broken shell and a star shell. Miss Courtenay-Latimer springs to mind and the time I met her in her quaint little house in the Eastern Cape.

Somewhere along the line I picked up soapstone and I took a brave step to turn it on my lathe. It caused havoc amongst my chisels but I sharpened it afterwards for my woodturnings. The last piece I turned was a Zambian rosewood fruit bowl for my wife, which I finished off with layers and layers and layers [20? 30?] of special wood sealer/varnish: Danish varnish.





Malawian pumpkin plaster casts

What on earth are the white plaster of Paris stuff? Let me explain. When we lived in Morningside, my gardener brought me Malawian pumpkin seeds and we grew it. It is a prolific grower with the most delicious flesh. The giant weighed just over 15 kg – it was big. On average I harvested 7.5 kg per fruit. And I never kept its seeds.

Our erstwhile neighbour visited us in Rivonia and brought a pumpkin that is an offspring that I gave her years back. And then I saved seeds which are now growing on my pavement. Let’s hope there will be enough for my neighbours to share.

Let’s go back to Morningside: the leaves were big and beautiful. I made a plaster-of-Paris cast of some leaves, especially the underside of the leaf. I keep it in my office because one day … The underside of the leaf is pronounced, rough and three dimensional. What to do with the cast? One day is one day …. Then. Maybe then …

If I ever will come around to do something with that plaster-of-Paris-pumpkin-leaf, it will be great. If not, it will just as well be great. I have it. I made the cast. I grew the original pumpkin. We ate it. I gave pumpkins away during the peak of covid 2020. I live with the memories of it. What will happen to it after me? I wish to know?! Are you in a better position to tell me? And by the by, I still feel the soft coarseness of the leave under my fingers.


Box with coelacanth

Joseph Cornell is always present in my mind – the American that built special boxes from ordinary throw-a-ways! If you have the inclination to click on the link to his art work you are in for a surprise or maybe you will say to me: “Thank you, but no thank you.” He was the inspiration behind my crate specially built for the cast of my coelacanth I carved originally in soapstone; that crate evolved from a throw-away rotten piece of wood. He was the inspiration to me making this special throw-away planks I used to build the box with my array of pens: the Conway Stewart fountain pen belonged to my late mother. The other pen I used to write with oil paint on a huge Philosopher I painted some time ago. In the background there is a photo of the Bronte sisters.

The very first time I saw the first coelacanth in the entire world happened in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape [now renamed Makhanda]. It was inside a galvanised zinc structure embedded inside a rough, crudely constructed yet strong as an ox, wooden crate.


Box with fountain pens

One of the fountain pens belonged to my late dad; I never saw him writing with it. I hardly saw him writing anything; yet, he was always busy making something or another. So, I venture a guess that you, my reader, have stuff that are rare and valuable to you – a plastic car collected by your mom, long since not with us; Nordic dictionary with the print so faint it is hardly legible; a fishing rod turned into a walking stick and the reverse of a plaster cast of the back of a Malawian pumpkin that once grew in Morningside, Sandton.


Axel Munthe - author of THE STORY OF SAN MICHELE

My advice to you about making or keeping or preserving legacies are manifold: keep on making things; keep on researching and writing things up; keep on making videos [albeit crude and rough and ready] it is yours. Those are your memories; your precious stuff that you made or that you inherited from somewhere. Somewhere? Not necessarily a family heirloom. It might be an unusual, rare or out of the ordinary find in a small tatty beach shop you picked up for next to nothing – it is yours. I recall that day on the South Coast of South Africa I found a book in a tatty and tasteless, garish beach café for about 25 cents. THE STORY OF SAN MICHELE by Axel Munthe. Afterwards I encountered a few times in other places; never ever in the same kind of wholly unexpected grotty place.

The secret history of the Mongols

Or THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE MONGOLS. It is on my to-read list for early 2023. Paul Kahn wrote it. Get it. Read it. And then you re-read it. This was a find by reading a book review in the Afrikaans newspaper DIE BEELD of many years ago.  It not for easy reading [my question to you is: why stick to stuff that is easy to read?]. I lend it to a friend of mine and it was brought back unread because it was too difficult to read. It is not skin of my friend’s nose – there are lots of books that are difficult to read – you are aware of the one I am almost finished with ANGELA’S ASHES which if revolting. Brother, the end is in sight. Keep at it and finish it.

Please write me your story: neelscoertse@wirelessza.co.za