Tony Morris @ Poole Pottery

I’m the kind of person who if I like something, will generally make the effort to find out as much as I can about it..

Take Poole Pottery… an odd subject maybe, but me & And have a number of really quite beautiful plates and pots that we’ve collected over the last few years and I’ve always got an eye out for shiny new things to acquire…

So I was somewhat surprised when despite having looked a bit into Poole Pottery and its history, I came across a designer that I’d completely missed, which is disappointing, as the plates and chargers of Tony Morris, are some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, with the kind of style and colour that really, really floats my boat,

I can’t believe I’ve never seen them before now…

It all started when I was contacted recently by The Virtual Museum of Poole. They had read my post on the Gordon Cullen Mural in Coventry and asked if they could borrow some of my photos. Poole Pottery was previously known as Carter & Company, who in their day were justifiably famous for producing high quality ceramic reliefs and murals including much of the London Underground and Cullen’s wonderful work in Coventry.

After I’d responded to say of course, I had a look around their very informative site and knew as soon as saw these images that I had to have Morris’s extraordinary work up on my blog…

Morris, who had never worked on ceramics before joining Poole Pottery straight from Art school in 1962, was offered the position purely on the strength of his paintings. It’s not clear how long he stayed, or how many designs he was responsible for, but the quality of his ideas and their execution is truly amazing…

It may sometimes be difficult to put into words what makes an object or a piece of art stand out as aesthetically pleasing, but I knew as soon as I saw these, that I wanted them… Sadly so do lots of other people and the best two pieces available on eBay tonight are available through “buy it now” for £1800 and £995…

So it looks like I’ll just have to make do with these photos until I make my first million…

Neil Armstrong

Sad news over the weekend that Neil Armstrong, the very first human to ever step foot on the moon, died at the age of 82.

I was 5 in July 1969, when the amazing Saturn 5 rocket powered out of Cape Canaveral and took the Apollo 11 astronauts to another world. Along with Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong was to become a household name, not just because of his “that’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind” speech) but also because he seemed like a thoroughly nice bloke and strangely unfazed by his life changing experiences.

The Space Race and Moon landings seem to mean more to my generation than those that followed. I guess it’s because like most kids from the 60’s, I can remember the excitement of being allowed to stay up late with M&D to watch history in the making on our scratchy little black and white telly…

Many years later I would fall for the whole conspiracy thing (the landing photos were faked and they were all in a warehouse in Area 51, or the computers were less powerful than todays mobile phones) …  but I’ve mellowed somewhat and read quite a lot about the moon landings, and I am now pretty convinced that there are indeed footprints in the moon dust…

Personally I think it’s a shame that we no longer think it worthwhile going to the moon “just because it’s there”… The next generation of exploration will almost certainly be money driven as we get ready to hoover up the natural resources and suck a second world dry..

And with the current Mars Curiosity Rover mission having a similar goal of establishing what the planet is worth in terms of minerals, the heroic nature of the Apollo Astronauts endeavours, is something we may never see the like of again…

A Renaissance Masterclass…

I couldn’t resist this, after yesterday’s brilliant story about the little old lady in Spain who tried to improve Christ’s image…

Underground Guerrilla Signs..

My friend Darren sent me a link to these rather excellent alternative London Underground signs…

(click image above for link to original photographers blog)

Apparently they’ve been appearing for some time now, but like 99% of passengers, I’m sad to say I’ve missed them..

They’ve been done so well, that to a regular commuter, their utter familiarity as part of an accepted, everyday visual clutter, results in them becoming almost invisible, losing all meaning beyond their colour and shape..

Well it’s a lesson learnt for me. I usually pride myself on at least attempting to see beyond the day to day, and resist the automatic filters that city life can generate.

Rest assured, that I will certainly be keeping a much sharper lookout for these signs from now on… How I would’ve loved to have noticed Shepherd’s Pie, overground, Gas mark 4 on a journey into work, it would have made my day…

Single Hauz..

I came across this rather fascinating idea the other day in a series of images produced by the Polish company Front Architects.

Inspired by the appearance of billboards, it is a whole house on a single column, that apparently can be built almost anywhere, even on water… I think there are two floors inside, with space enough for sleeping, eating and sitting, although I havent been able to find a plan to sus out exactly how they fit it all in…

Still, it all looks very stylish and as an idea for providing temporary or short term holiday accommodation, I think it’s a pretty good one…

(I wouldn’t want to stay in the Euro 2012 car park one though…)

Anna Meredith – Nautilus

I’m not really a fan of classical music, there’s not generally enough electronics in it for my tastes. Obvious exceptions would include Steve Reich and Philip Glass, whose minimal repetitions always send a shiver down my spine…

Now it looks like I may have another name to add to this auspicious list, because on Steve Lamacq’s BBC 6 afternoon show yesterday, I heard a track called Nautilus by Anna Meredith that even half heard across the office, sounded amazing…

I can’t find it anywhere online yet other than at the beginning of a mix here…

As it’s a mix, I’m not entirely sure if the drums towards the end are not another track mixed in. I don’t think so though (I certainly hope not) as it sounds wonderful to my ears, and I never thought I’d hear myself say that about brass… repetitive, climbing stabs of noise, deep electronic dubby bass sounds underneath, all very nice and proper…

I’d not heard of Anna before yesterday, but I now know from her site above, that she is “one of the UK’s most in demand young composers and her music is widely performed around the world..”

It looks like Nautilus will be released shortly on the Black Prince Fury Ep… I can’t wait to hear the rest of the record if it’s as good as this…

UPDATE  – 24th October 2012

Finally here it is, and what a wonderful thing Anna has created.

Not really a “classical” record at all, sounding like it would be just at home on WARP Records as Deutscher Gramophone.. full of bleeps, strange noises and lushness…

Click the sleeve image below for a link to Spotify and see what you think…

Boris the Chump…

There is nothing more satisfying than a smug git making an idiot of himself…

This is a man who, apart from some surprisingly ugly buses, has done absolutely nothing for London and yet takes all the credit for everything. All his “triumphs” were inherited from Ken Livingston: the bikes, the congestion charge, increased Police numbers, the Olympics…

I for one will be very interested to look back and assess his achievements over the next four years.. My fear is that, other than some shameless self promotion and blatant manoeuvring for the Tory Leadership, our beloved Mayor will leave nothing more tangible from his eight years in charge of the worlds greatest city, than photos like this…

Boris Johnson is a buffoon (he can’t even ride a zip line) and the sooner we “Londoners” realise that we’ve been had, the better…

2012 Olympic Branding…

The whole Olympic 2012 restrictions on branding and advertising are so draconian and ridiculous that it’s difficult to take them seriously…

Badminton players (quite rightly) get expelled for not competing properly, but all other forms of competition are explicitly banned: money can only be got via Visa machines (which then don’t work) local traders have to change the names of their business to avoid prosecution, and chips can only be bought from you know who. I can’t work out if this is the power of advertising or simply the Power of the State…

There are two things recently that have caused me to stop and wonder at this convoluted state of affairs…

Firstly, the seemingly omnipresent Beats by Dre headphones on the heads of the swimmers in Zaha’s very excellent swimming pool… the only bit of non sponsored branding in the entire place… The justification apparently is that these “special” headphones are used to block sound out, so the swimmers are not getting their last fix of Metallica/Kylie/ Daft Punk, they are in deep concentration mode…

You have to give it to the Doctor.. breaking the rules with such elegance and simplicity by giving stuff away… genius

The second thing that has struck me is that something is missing… something that has become so ingrained in my visual conscious that it’s taken me a while to notice..

Where are the famous three stripes on the arms and legs of the Olympic Volunteers shiny Adidas clothes… It must be the first time that the company has made clothes without stripes… I’m surprised the sewing machines didn’t explode with the paradox…

I bet that was a difficult meeting: Yes you can make ten’s of thousands of uniforms and official sports kits but no, you can’t put your most distinctive feature on any of it.. Take a good look at the photo to the right, you will never see it’s like again (well, not for another four years anyway, unless Nike get their act together of course…)

And has anyone else noticed how much they look like Sainsburys uniforms without the stripes?… “Excuse me young man, can you tell me the way to the sports (section) please?”

Oh the irony…