Arts and Crafts at the
Great Eccleston Show.
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Great Eccleston, Lancashire.
15th – 16th July, 2017.
Rosemary Cooper.
Working Craftsmen on show.
When I'm not reporting on heavy horses, I always enjoy the arts and crafts at a show, so the Working Craftsmen marquee at the North-West's premier two-day show drew me like a magnet. I admired the work of Ian Burns the stickmaker, because my late partner, Edward Hart, who mentored me when I first reported on heavy horses at shows, wrote books on making sticks and taught me to appreciate them. Owen Jones fashioned oak swill baskets, with thin strips of oak woven onto a frame of hazel, and so named because of their use in the Lake District copper industry. Wheelwright Joseph Fredricks had a dog cart on show, and told me he made wheels for show drays. These vehicles can cost £10,000, one of the factors that makes competing in heavy horse driving classes one of the most expensive ways of showing horses. (A good show dray has brightly painted wooden wheels; rubber tyres usually go to the bottom of the class.) Barry Milne wove straw into bee skips, formerly used as hives, but people found it difficult to collect honey without killing the bees until the modern hive was invented; now skips are used only for collecting swarms. Stone mason Ian Hughes was teaching a youngster how to carve, and spinners, weavers, and dyers Janet, Geri, and Dianne, from Fylde Heddles and Treadles, were demonstrating their skills.
However the star attraction for me was a display of model horse-drawn vehicles. I'm familiar with these because of the
Guild of Model Wheelwrights, whose members frequently display their work at shows, and this collection was outstanding. It was the work of David Pearson, who gets his plans from Reading Museum. I feasted my eyes on a wealth of waggons (with four wheels and curving sides), tip carts (with two wheels), a hermaphrodite (which converts from waggon to tip cart), ploughs (including a reversible plough; you can turn the blade so soil falls to one side or the other), gipsy caravans, a model of a rare tree transplanter (for people who wanted mature trees planted on their estates), and a "Surrey with a Fringe on Top" (horse-drawn people-carrier), all set off by miniature signposts and stands of shepherds' crooks and sticks.
Competitions
for arts, crafts and other handiwork feature largely at local shows, and at the Great Eccleston they occupied several marquees.
Photo competitions featured huge numbers of wonderful entries. The winner of the Farming section was exceptional; a brilliant full rainbow gleamed behind bright sunlight in the foreground with storm light on the landscape behind it. I tried to pick the photo best showing the character of the bird as my own winner of the bird study. Among the contenders were puffins, kingfishers, robins watching you and a crested tit heading straight for the camera, but I was drawn to Anne Harvey's photo of a bird I know – Arthur. He tours the show circuit as part of Ben Potter's team of eagles and vultures, and last year embarked on a week-long solo tour of Somerset before deciding that life with humans guarantees more food. This photo of a bird with long curly eyelashes and lots of attitude could of course have been an Arthur look-alike, but African White-headed Vultures are a red-list endangered species. (I know... Arthur ought to be breeding... the trouble is he eats lady vultures...)
Also in the same marquee were paintings. Chosen as the Most Outstanding Painting was an acrylic portrait of an old man. Colours like deep purplish-pink, orange, dusky blue, and ochre were surprisingly effective for portraying ageing skin. Winner of the best drawing, Mr, Mrs or Miss Neeley's coloured pencil study of a bay horse looked as if it had been painted by a professional.
The greater part of the marquee was given over to children's art. Is education merely to equip children to find good jobs, or to enrich their lives in every possible way? Since my own life has been marvellously turned around by the discovery that I can paint and draw, I am certain of the importance of teaching art for children to have rich fulfilling lives. You don't need to be born with special talent, but sadly art is often underrated, resulting in children having to struggle with cheap, poor quality materials that leave them thinking that it is them, not their tools, that aren't up to the task.
There were many divisions and projects in this section; rainbows, pirates, masks, and animals spring to mind. One winner I spotted was a recognisable curlew that didn't appear to be a mere copy of a photo. The stewards' special award had gone to a fantasy drawing with two heads and two faces, lion and human, combined into one being. The local school, St Mary's, had taken the show as its project. They had interviewed the secretary, Mrs Sheila Robinson, M. B. E., and I learned that she received the award from Prince Charles six years ago.
As you entered another marquee, wall hangings of patchwork caught the eye. A many-coloured cube was built up of smaller cubes with one missing – it was hanging onto the bottom of the picture with a woeful expression on its face! Looking at the various classes, it hadn't occurred to me that you could knit a blue tit, complete with correct markings on its head. The supreme exhibit was a fine cream-coloured shawl crocheted to look like lace. Cakes with figures on top included one of a horse refusing a fence while the rider, who had sailed over his head, lay prone in "water". All done with icing!
Arts and crafts for sale.
I soon met a friendly photographer,
Jo McIntyre, whose wildlife photos are outstanding. Grizzly bears, whom Jo encountered in Alaska, splashed through rivers while water streamed off them, captured with such a high shutter speed that every drop was sharp. A Highland cow trots straight towards you. On another scale, two tiny harvest mice peep out from between ears of corn.
Most of Jo's photos are of British wildlife, including rare and beautiful Black Grouse displaying at their lek (courtship ground), which must have posed a challenge. There is so much more to wildlife photography than pressing a button on a phone! Jo explained that once she has found a lek – not easy – she had to set up a hide and let the birds get used to the sight, and then accept the sound of the camera. After a fortnight or so, she could take photos.
Jo keeps her prices down so as many people as possible can enjoy her work. Some photographers, she told me, would be happy to sell her poster-sized photos for £400 once every few weeks. She was charging £75 for the biggest photos, but if the buyer was delighted, she's just as happy taking £5 for a little photo. The Awards page on her website makes interesting reading.
One poster featured a female mallard seeing off a much bigger bird; an osprey who couldn't get out of there fast enough! Jo told me that people prefer photos of birds they recognise, so at first this photo didn't sell well because many didn't know what an osprey was. (It's a strikingly marked bird of prey, nearly as big as an eagle, that plunges dramatically to snatch big fish from the surface of lakes.) Then ospreys featured in a TV series on British wildlife, and people suddenly realised the appeal of the smaller bird seeing off the bigger one. Jo told me that people love photos of Barn Owls and Tawny Owls, but not the British Little Owl because they don't recognise it. She pointed out a photo of a beautiful male Bullfinch, quite a common bird, resplendent with his bright pink breast, black cap and dove-grey wings with a white patch above his black tail. It was a poor seller because people who think at first it might be a Robin, don't really know what it is, so can't remember when their friends ask. All this was news to me – from early childhood I've known common birds, and even if I hadn't
learnt to recognise them by myself, Nature Study was taught at my school.
I was glad I met Jo early in the morning so we could chat until her customers arrived.
I had two craft and gift marquees to see. They contained objects such as wood turning,
tooled leather, and walking sticks as well as knitting, jewellery, and candles, but I
honed in on artists and photographers.
Ken Clark of Wolfshead Photgraphic had wonderful wildlife photos on sale, as well as promoting photgraphic workshops and wildlife tours, in Britain and abroad. His most memorable image was of a tiger resting at the foot of a tree in Ranthambhore, India.
Andy Drysdale was manning a stall for his wife Pat, who paints animals and
country subjects. So do many other artists, but each one has his or her individual style;
no two are ever the same, and so don't compete because their work appeals to different
people. However Pat paints something different – pixies – originally for her own
grandchildren. One pixie held leaves as umbrellas to shelter baby blue tits from the
rain while he himself was drenched; others painted bright colours on the wings of
butterflies or tucked hedgehogs up in dry leaves for the winter.
Elsewhere, the smooth perfection of lan Thompson's portraiture captured perfectly the
images of children and animals in photographs. Most portrait painters favour pastel,
but he mostly paints in acrylics.
Lorraine Black of Paint the Hound
was a professional artist before she started to paint animals, mostly dogs, in acrylic
or watercolour. She showed me some excellent drawings as well.
Brian and Kath Crowther make something unique. Their miniature fences, signposts,
stiles, gates, and drystone walls form delightful 3D foregrounds to photos of striking views in the North of England. All use materials from the area in question, with the addition of a border collie and sometimes sheep, made of stone powder and painted. Flossydog Productions is named after their own dog.
Lily Bollenberg produced something else new to me – botanical plaster casts – that are usually commissions. She picks a few plants with shapely flowers or seed heads and presses them into clay. Then she removes them and pours in architectural plaster to form a cast. She showed me a particularly attractive cast of alliums, but a few hedgerow plants go a long way. Originally a glass fuser, she still sells some glass artefacts, such as wall panels and sea glass earrings.
Elsewhere Barbara Pearson (beepeejem@aol.com) was selling very affordable dichroic glass jewellery. This technique, originally developed through space technology, produces exceptionally brilliant, sometimes iridescent, colours, and is usually relatively expensive. Barbara sold me a little beauty for £5, as well as a Tree of Life pendant unlike any I'd ever seen before for £3.
I visited the Great Eccleston Show on my way home from the Great Yorkshire – two Great shows in one trip! – and discovered one further joy to tempt me back. With no direct main road between the two, part of the journey lay through the Forest of Bowland. This was a first for me, but even though I live among wonderful hills, it's so beautiful that I'll soon return!
Heavy Horses at the Great Eccleston Show.