A Summer Sunday, I was waiting at the bus stop with a little trepidation, as this was my first visit to the little stall up the winding lane. I could smell the fresh grass cuttings and the wood scent of the bus shelter. It was warm with that clammy lazy feel of a summer’s day. This was before the crazy mad rush of a Sunday that we now have to live with.
Eventually the old green country bus appeared lumbering its weary way towards Leatherhead and final destination of Guildford. I clambered on and set off up the stairs as this journey would take sometime. I enjoyed the high perspective views over fences and into gardens and could watch the village activities, a frozen moment like a snap shot. We trundled through Leatherhead and stopped at the bus garage to change drivers and I dozed in the heat.
Eventually we passed the Effingham crossroads and drove into the tunnel of trees and headed down the steep hill where I was to get off. All was quiet and sleepy. I waited at the lane end and eventually a little green, rather battered old van popped along and stopped for me to embark. There was Denis with a broad smile on his face, opening the door for me to get in. Off we went up the familiar narrow tree lined lane and on further into the canopy of trees. I relaxed and noticed the old sacks and tomato trays in the back as we bowled along.
Suddenly we swerved, turning into the driveway and bumping up the brick drive arriving in a shower of pebbles and twigs.
“Well here we are!”
I helped Denis load the van with the pots, putting them carefully in the tomato boxes and we set off down the drive again. Here, we set up the ramshackle stall and found more items tucked away in the caravan. I enjoyed unwrapping old newspapers to reveal the fascinating pieces one by one, like it was Christmas. Each pot, bowl or vase was manoeuvred into place and Denis added a price label to each one. Then we sat down to wait hopefully for some visitors.
While we sat, Denis talked animatedly about the pots. He talked of Tenmuko, Chinese brush, sang de Boeuf, ash glazes and tea bowls, another language to me at the time. The one thing I always remember is that he said, “In China the best art, ceramics, painting, and poetry had to be completely natural, like a piece of nature itself.”
When I looked again at some of his pots I really could understand this “Zen” like concept and felt that Denis’s pots really did appear almost like a plant growing out of the soil. The ash green glazes, the mottled browns and blacks merged completely into their verdant surroundings. It came to me later, that nature and its capacity for endless variation was some how embodied in the pots and reminded me years later of Hopkins wonderful evocation of nature in his verses:
Glory be to dappled things –
For skies of couple colour
For rose moles in all stipple upon the trout that swim
Fresh- firecoal chestnut falls; finches wings;
Landscape plotted pierced- fold, fallow, and plough,
And all trades, their gear and tackle trim.
“Pied Beauty, Gerard Manley Hopkins”
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