I'M AT: Brian and Ann's pad in Nelson; then the All Nations Pub in Barrytown, with should really be called All Nations Pub Town, cos there's nothing else there; and two places in Hokitika, Jade capital of New Zealand - Stumpers Bar where I got a single room to get a decent kip, which somehow I managed after only two bottles of wine; and Mountain Jade Hostel, which was streaming with nibbly children.
Travelling makes you do stuff that you probably wouldn't consider doing back home.
The Nelson Bonecarver, Stephan, a naturalised German, had a great reputation, so I decided to trouble Brian and Anna for another night in their gaff so I could go to the workshop (I made them a lasagne in lieu of rent.) And what a great decision it was. Let's set aside the fact that the pendant sitting around my neck now is very simple and pretty uninspired (although people seem to like it). That's my end of the bargain. Stephan's job was simply to be everything you can ask for in a teacher - patient, inspirational, methodical, disciplined and charming.
So with hacksaw and grinder and drill and sandpaper and polishing wheel, wearing sweaty goggles, we, a group of six (three Germans, a really nice English guy already wearing a handmade bone chimp who made a prancing horse for his niece, and an American Rabbi, who stained his bone qaballah with tea to give it the look of something that Methuselah might have worn) gave form to our paper designs. And the sun shone, we had lunch together, and Stephan taught us how to drill and carve and rub, and his process was great - we should take it step by step and let the carving evolve, rather than trying to draw a perfect pendant and slacishly follow it. And it was on this basis that I decided not to drill into the thing.
Stephan also told us about the Maori traditions underlying our work, and gave us each a bag and poem desribing the shapes each of us had chosen. Mine was the koru, the spiral, symbolising regrowth and change. This was all great news, because to me it looked like a mushroom.
This experience inspired me to make another bone carving in Barrytown, but unfortunately the guy only had half a day with us, so it felt a bit rushed, and he wasn't so into the spiritual side of things. As it happened, though, my carving was more visually complete.
It didn't end there. I also made a pendant out of jade, or greenstone, as they call it here. This was also great. Steve from the Solomon Islands watched over me and an Estonian perfectionist called Hanus as we made the greenstone milky with cuts. The design this time was a fishhook. I saw something similar to the one I'd done hanging up in the shop out front, priced at 210 NZ dollars. The whole workshop, a good, long day, including materials, had only cost me 90 dollars, and I'd made it. Me.
And it was clearly Me that made my knife, also made in Barrytown over the course of a day that involved heating steel until it glowed red, bashing it into shape on an anvil, cutting, gluing, pinning and shaping a handle, then grinding, polishing and sanding the blade. My misfortune here was that I didn't listen too well during the bash bash bit so my knife is really quite unelegant. Steve - another Steve - told me it was far more useful this way, and that, typically, you could hammer nails in all day with it. Next to the scimitars and bowie knives that the others had made, it looked like a dog's dinner. Great day though. And they had a giant swing that took four people to pull on a rope to prime, and a wooden wall for hurling axes into, and some moonshine made of sugar, water and yeast that sat in a silver still until we'd polished off the bottle Seve had put by for us. They had a dog, too. Two dogs in fact, although one was quite mysterious and didn't come out oo much; and a cat and some ducks. Oh, and cockateels. I got a lift on the back of Hamish's truck, stood to salute the passers-by with my non-grasping hand as we sped up the highway.
That's it for now, though. So don't worry too much about suspiciously pendant-shaped packages arriving around the time of your birthday.
No comments:
Post a Comment