green

apple picking

AFTER APPLE-PICKING







My long two- pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.

But I am done
with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep
is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.


I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning
from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.

It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep
before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.

Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.

I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.

There were ten thousand thousand
fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.

For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.


One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say
whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

Robert Frost

clay

sometimes i'm just overwhelmed by the beauty of this stuff. does it appear that way to you too?

after a day of research, i'd say the most i've learned is that the clay in your location is very very important, and that many nooks, crannies & villages have distinctive styles of the porcelain/pottery that come from their town.


but i am so grateful that more every day is available online, that others seem to find this important as well, and that one can come across articles like this one. it's not precisely on topic with these particular illustrations, but it's not exactly not, either. it reveals more of the complexity of the incoming japonisme, and some of the importance of ceramics as cultural artifact.

and besides, it's by gabriel weisberg.

JAPANESE ART ON A PLATE

At the Paris World’s Fair of 1867 there was immense interest in a ceramic service decorated by Félix Bracquemond for Eugène Rousseau. It was considered to be revolutionary in the evolution of dinner-service decoration, as it was not only the first in France in which Japanese motifs were used, it was also the first to break from traditional schemes of plate decoration.

It at once became the touchstone by which other decorators using Japanese motifs were judged, and remained successful for decades. Other versions were produced after Rousseau (1827-1891), its primary promoter, sold his business in 1885 to Ernest Leveillé. He in turn sold it to Harant et Guignard, known as ‘Maison Toy’, in 1902. Louis Harant of Maison Toy continued to edit the service until 1938.

The Bracquemond- Rousseau service demonstrates that there was a commercial market for ceramic decoration in this style. However, while it may have been the first of its kind, and eminently successful, it was not the only early table service influenced by Japanese art.

In 1873-74 another service was shown at the exhibition of the Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

Commis- sioned by the jeweller Frédéric Boucheron, designed and painted by Henri Lambert, and produced for Eugène Rousseau at Creil- Montereau, it is possibly as large as the Bracquemond-Rousseau service. Although comparable in quality to the earlier service, it appears to exist only as one set in a private collection in Paris, together with a few pieces in the Musée National Adrien Dubouché, Limoges, and there is no evidence that it was commercially manufactured.

As a result, it has remained almost entirely unknown, and is published here for the first time. Its story makes clear how ceramic decoration became the way in which Japonisme was introduced to a public that had the financial means to purchase such table services for their homes. (read the rest of the article here)