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total immersion at last

Posted jane -->on 24th Apr 2011

five days of speaking Spanish in an all male working environment with Antonio, Raphael, and Carlos, the three brothers at Moreno Leon in Torrejoncillo – one of the few remaining makers of traditional Spanish terracotta storage jars – tinajas. a privilege, an utter indulgence of me on their part, and a fantastic inside view of something that almost died out in the UK with Isaac Button, the last traditional English potter.

the telephone, plastered with clay, next to Rafa’s wheel, jammed between ear and shoulder while he throws or coils – an indispensable part of running a modern business which is not usually given access to a British studio potter’s workshop.

the workshop is half of a huge L-shaped barn-like structure; the other half houses the kiln,  this container-sized green metal box, gas fired, computer-controlled, which replaces the open top updraught wood fired kiln the family were using even in 1989, when photos were taken for the book, la tinajeria tradicional en la cerámica española. Antonio told me they would use encina, evergreen oak, and  finish the firing  with gum cistus, jara, the incense scented shrub of the extremaduran maquis. the smell was wonderful, he said, with no real nostalgia for a laborious process. the back of this space is given over to clay preparation and storage, something I did not investigate, due to lack of time, and not wanting to disrupt their workday. the clay is local, from land they own about 3 km from the pueblo.

moreno leon goes back seven generations in the family to the first whose name is known, in the late eighteenth century, but probably well before that. Spain used to be dotted with tanajerias, every pueblo with a usable clay source would be making storage jars for keeping wine and oil, probably since the Romans; now this is the only one in our province, Caceres.

the jars are made with a combination of throwing and coiling methods; the bases all thrown on these low electric wheels, then coils added, and tidied up on the wheel. the pots are trundled about on jack trolleys, and take about 4 days to make, depending on size, being allowed to stiffen up naturally in between steps.

I was given a thrown base to start coiling on

but my pot, a cono, the straight sided typical extremaduran household jar, stayed off the wheel after that.


Antonio sneaked some photos without my being aware; this taken across the lip, the boca, of the piece he was working on. compare the beautiful regular coil he has attached, to the raggedy edges of mine …..

Carlos is the real coiling specialist.

here he is adding a coil. looks easy, doesn’t it!

two kinds of really big pot – this big-bellied shape

which they make with the deep ridges too (surcos)

and the big conos.

third day; before continuing to coil the outside is scraped and smoothed with a piece of bamboo, then paddled with the ping-pong bat-shaped wooden paddle – there are at least three different shapes, concave, convex, and flat, beautiful objects in their own right. I worked from four in the afternoon until eight in the evening every day (their working day is eight to eight, with two hours for lunch) and the pot was left uncovered in between, which allowed just the right amount of drying.

portrait of Carlos, by Antonio.

smaller tinajas with surcos, native to Galicia.

fourth day; scraped, smoothed and paddled.

now I have a platform to stand on. it is meant for the huge ali-baba jars, so I have to watch my feet.

fifth day; ready for the lip and the bung.

I got the lip on, with no wheel, after considerable trouble, fussing, and fiddling. Antonio showed me how, but I don’t have his experience and skill, of course.

the bung hole goes on in a similar way. I am so envious sometimes of the dexterity of potters who have been handling clay for a lifetime.

Antonio working on a set of short conos; he explained that if it is done right there will be no drip of wine or oil to waste or make a mess.

a combined signature to finish. my spiraling decoration allows a camino for the ants, I was told reproachfully.

and here we are, Antonio, Carlos, the cono, and the apprentice tinajera.

I’ll let Antonio have the last word.

eating on the porch in april

Posted jane -->on 14th Apr 2011

it has been so warm that eating on the porch every evening has been the rule rather than the exception.

a selection of local, extremaduran delicacies – a delicious goats’ cheese, manchego, and two kinds of sausage. the drink is the remains of sloe gin from my English garden, with tonic ….

san miguel beer

 

consulting the great tapas cookery book they gave me for my birthday, by Simone and Inéz Ortega.

 

low sunshine across the olive trees

judias verdes – the flat green beans which are so much nicer than runner beans – with hard boiled eggs and anchovy dressing, and pimientos verdes stuffed with rice and tomatoes. fresh and inviting,

with a salad – from Carrefour – but we had to go there to buy fish.

a peaceful evening, except for the ruido de las ranas – the frog chorus …..

festoons and orange tips

Posted jane -->on 12th Apr 2011

early spring brings some butterflies I haven’t seen here before, like this Spanish festoon, a wonderful creature. it looks freshly emerged with its very furry body. the other I saw earlier, last week, was a Southern orange tip, a much more gaudy version of our northern one, mainly bright yellow with orange tips to its wings, whereas ours is white with orange.

also plenty of this one, the small copper, darting about busily.

and a common blue, the colour of the gas flame under the kettle, whizzing in zigzags along the muddy path, very difficult to catch; I got this image as a still from a video clip I filmed, so the resolution is very low and I can’t show it any closer up.

also I have been seeing small heath, gatekeepers, and small whites, maybe a green-veined white, and a comma.

a lovely big dung beetle, shiny, about two and a half centimetres long.

tadpoles in a puddle …. one wonders whether they will have had time to grow into frogs before the puddle dries up.

and a very handsome locust (I checked out my identification and found that a bush cricket would have had much longer legs and antennae) who was so sure he was beautifully camouflaged that he let us get really close.

cork oaks are part of the landscape here. the trunks before harvesting are fantastically convoluted, dense with stripe and pattern.

taking the bark off keeps them healthy apparently; it is done every ten years.

just an appealing picture – someone has been rooting up trees and has a very nice stack of firewood.

below the Montanchez citadel the rock falls away very steeply into a deep arroyo, lined with orange trees and olive groves. a stream rushes down here and it must be quite a fertile, sheltered spot. casetas cling to the terraces, old tiles and dry stone walls making picturesque little views, full of the sound of nightingales trilling at this time of year.

now the sierra is full of nightingales singing. imagine this – a walk up a steep path paved with worn granite stones and smoothed boulders, studded with wild flowers and grasses, edged by yellow and white broom, in the cool morning before the sun strikes you with its heat.

each turn brings a new view – white cows hiding amongst white broom in flower;

a white horse amongst yellow broom and spikes of moth mullein. and birdsong – always the gentle toot of the hoopoe in the background, sometimes two or three together, all at different pitches, making an oddly musical medley. the slip sliding, bubbling song of the nightingales predominates, often three or four challenging each other across the little grassy meadows in the hollows between crags, but the explosive buzzy crackle of dartford warbler song emanates from several trees and bushes.

the purple viper’s bugloss is starting to flower now.

these pink flowers are some sort of field geranium

in the deep grass of my finca several flushes of flowers have come and gone in the past few weeks. one I can’t find in my flower book has tall hatted seed cases, like a larkspur but much more exaggerated, so a mass of green spikes sticks up above the flower heads. I have pressed a few of these in my thick Spanish cookery book.

wet and watery – extremaduran spring

Posted jane -->on 2nd Apr 2011

one almost overcast morning I put on my boots and braved the muddy track that last November was impassable, all overgrown with brambles.

at the end of this section the puddles and mud start. unfortunately, despite a ban and a notice forbidding it on the sierra, off-road motorcyclists use this track, and they have made a real mess of it, including breaking through a bridge which crosses an underpass allowing livestock through.

the fig trees were just coming out at this point, and the rock roses along with wild asparagus spears, the lavender and many small yellow and white flowers dotted the camino.

the path zig-zags around the edge of the sierra and the beginning of olive groves

on the right, the sea of grey green leaves

until it takes you further into the sierra again, flowery pastures,

and the little stream that comes tumbling out of the hills, which you have to cross.

water as clear as glass, winding its way through, around and under granite boulders

Tilda loves to paddle, and here is a secret valley, running along a slot in the granite, between two sections of the path.

further along the stream bed opens out amongst big flat rocks, grass and these beautiful white flowers which love to grow in water. I see them everywhere on the edges of ponds at this time of year in Extremadura, and this spring, in the pond at Morston too. it is hard to see where there is water and what is the edge of the brook.