April
Towards the end of March I undertook a physically and emotionally demanding journey by public transport cross-country to Saffron Walden, with my mother in a wheelchair.
What a beautiful place! I was bowled over by it.
The 600-year-old former maltings building was until recently a Youth Hostel. Alas, no longer.
There is a very fine museum and the ruins of a 12th century castle.
The church is built of a mixture of stone and local flint.
Many of the houses are decorated with patterns made by stamping a mould onto wet plaster (pargeting). Most of these patterns are geometrical: waves, chequers and zigzags.
The second photo shows stylised saffron crocus flowers. In the museum I saw the wooden mould used for this pattern.
Here is a view of part of the Bridge End Gardens. It was a perfect spring day and I didn’t see another soul there.
In the early years of the 2nd World War the folk of Saffron Walden raised a large sum of money to sponsor a ship for the Royal Navy. That ship was HMS Lapwing and she took part in the D-day landings and escorted eight convoys to Murmansk and Archangel. The purpose of our visit was to remember, with the Lapwing Association, the men who went down when the ship was torpedoed on 20th March 1945 and sank within 20 minutes with the loss of 158 lives. My father was the Navigating Officer and he was one of 61 survivors picked out of the Arctic Sea. He was 23 years old and I was an unborn baby. He never spoke to us of this experience.
Three of the survivors are still alive. I had the great privilege of meeting one of them, Tommy Jess. Here he is with his wife, grand-daughter and grandson-in-law.
After the ceremony I went for a long walk, in the course of which I found the Turf Maze. This, being unicursal, is actually a labyrinth or “Troytown”.
It was exactly what I needed. Walking the labyrinth calmed and stilled and centred me.
Afterwards I sat on a bench and wrote about it, and as I missed a meeting of ABCD (Artists’ Book Club at the Dove) on that day I decided that when I was home again I would make a book .
I painted cartridge-paper with a mixture of methyl-cellulose paste and acrylic paint, and used the end of a paintbrush to scratch words and other marks into the wet paste.
The book is called “What the Labyrinth told me”. It is large, messy, primitive and very physical.
I hope to show photos of the finished book next time.
March
March 5th was the fifth anniversary of the suicide-bombing of al-Mutanabbi Street, the winding street of the booksellers in old Baghdad. It happened to coincide with the monthly meeting of the Fountain Poets in Wells, and I spoke about the anniversary and the bombing, pointing out that our upper room in the Fountain Inn is the equivalent of the Shabandar Cafe where the owner lost his five sons, buried in the rubble. Then I read two poems from my collection “What is a Book?”, which is my response to the bombing. One of the other poets read a lament for Homs. 21 people were present, an unusually high attendance. It was a powerful evening.
Special readings held in many places around the world included one at UCLA, and there was a ceremony on al-Mutanabbi Street with relatives of those who died as well as survivors of the blast. And, for the first time, thanks to the Iraqi novelist Lutfiya Al-Dulaimi, our project was discussed in an Iraqi newspaper. The Coalition now has 450 members world-wide: printers, writers and book-artists.
On 2nd March I was one of the poets reading at “Voices in the City” a day-long event during Bath Literature Festival. To my delight I received an order for “What is a Book” from one of the other poets.
Here (below) is the last of the commissioned notebooks, an A5 sketckbook covered in a fabric with a woven check pattern that has been overdyed (not by me) , probably in Indigo, with a stitched resist on the diagonal. The result is subtle and complex. I’ve sewn on an elastic band to keep the book closed. It’s a hair-band, 10 for £1 from the Pound Shop!
I’m busy making the invitations for Gabriel and Charlotte’s wedding. As I have cut and placed the pieces by eye they are all slightly different. Here are two of them: front view and back view. The design and colour-scheme were inspired by Indian marigold-garlands and Tibetan Thangkas. The font is Rockwell Condensed, Char’s favourite!
February
So far, in this corner of Somerset at least, February is living up to its old name “Ice-month”. Just the weather to stay indoors and make a book or three! These are for a friend who has asked me to make six notebooks, to be covered with fabric left-over from making Christmas presents for her family. All three are Coptic-sewn to lie flat when open. The bigger one is 10x15cm and the little ones are 10cm square.
On day one I make the book-cloth and leave it to dry overnight; on day two I cover the boards and leave them to dry under pressure, and on day three I make the book block and do the sewing. I usually have music playing while I work. Sheryl Crow accompanied these.
Here are a couple more. I try to make a different stitching pattern on each book, and make a more decorative pattern on the front if it’s not obvious which is the front. I listened to “Highway 61 Revisited” while making these.
January
At the gateway of the new year, looking both ways but mostly forward, especially to this year’s big projects, which are
- A chapbook for a San Francisco poet whose work I love (if I didn’t I wouldn’t be doing it!)
- A contribution to BookArtObject’s Edition 4
I can tell by the way I’ve been getting ideas in my dreams that I’m pretty immersed in both of these.
Today I’ve been working on a birthday present for a friend. We have a lot in common: she is a poet and a maker of books, a gardener and knitter, a walker and wild-swimmer and a lover of birds. This is a tiny concertina book in a Japanese-style box portfolio. The plants are invisible because they are imaginary … Lady’s smirk, Shepherd’s curse, Tart’s-tongue fern …
About Barley Books
Hello! I’m Ama Bolton. I live in England’s smallest city, Wells, and I make books.
You can e-mail me at barleybooks@hotmail.co.uk
Until last year I was a member of Bron Bradshaw’s weekly Book Class at The Dove Studios. Now the class has metamorphosed into ABCD: Artists’ Book Club at the Dove, and we meet once a month to share ideas, news, skills and food.
For the last three years I’ve had the immense privilege of joining The Travelling Bookbinder for a weekend workshop at Bressay Lighthouse. This is in Shetland, a 36-hour journey from my home and a place I love for its austere beauty and for the good friends I’ve made there.
Why Barley Books? I inherited the surname Arnott from my father’s forebears who lived in the Kingdom of Fife. The name comes from the Gaelic word ornacht meaning barley.
From Grandfather, old soldier, long absent, came my first surname
meaning “barley”: green turning pale gold in the brief Northern summer
for milling and malting, for bannocks and whisky and beer.
