The Waterless Sea

Mirages are “real, but not true”, according to Christopher Pinney in his book The Waterless Sea. Real in that they are genuine optical phenomena (and can even be photographed); but not true in that “the exact nature of what beholders believe they can see reflects, in part, the concerns and anxieties of their times”. Pinney’s book describes some famous examples.

The thirst of the gazelles

Mirages occur when light is refracted by hot or cold air, making things appear in the wrong place. They can be ‘superior’ or ‘inferior’, depending on whether the apparition is above or below the real object. A typical ‘inferior’ mirage is the desert oasis – actually a refraction of the blue sky above. Known in Sanskrit as mrigtrishna – ‘the thirst of the gazelles’ – Lawrence of Arabia regarded these frustrating visions as “an ever-present feature of the desert”.

The elusive island of St Brandan

A superior mirage frequently takes the awe-inspiring form of a ‘city in the sky’ – also called a Fata Morgana after the tricksy Arthurian sorceress, Morgan le Fay. The most enduring of these was the phantom isle of St Brandan in the Canary Islands. Seen many times over hundreds of years, this mysterious landmass prompted four abortive expeditions and appeared on maps from the 1400s right up to the 1750s.

The breath of the clam-monsters

In Japan, shinkiro (mirage) was attributed to the breath of giant sea molluscs. When this purple mist bubbled up from the deep, it hung above the water in the form of a spectral island called Horai, complete with palaces and temples. In China, the island was known as Penglai, and 8th-century poet Ch’ien Ch’i declared that any dignitary making the crossing to Japan would spot “the high houses of the clam-monsters bannered with rainbows”.

Words: Joly Braime. Illustrations: Joe Latham.

Taken from The Waterless Sea, by Christopher Pinney (Reaktion Books, 2018), £18.

This article originally featured in issue 9 of Ernest Journal, on sale now.

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Under the mountain

Woodworker David White carves spoons, jugs and other objects out of oak that he’s salvaged from the abandoned slate mines of North Wales, which has to be one of the most Ernest projects we’ve ever encountered…

Photo by David White

David, how did you come up with the idea to create the Mine Oak collection?

I’ve always been fascinated by the slate mining landscapes of Snowdonia. It was while on a tour of the vast slate caverns that opened my eyes to how much wood was still underground. I made a couple of cups from a sample of oak I retrieved from a mine and realised the colours in the wood were completely unique. From there my imagination ran wild with the idea of weathered wood, the rugged landscape and the industrial heritage of the mines.

What was the condition of the oak that you salvaged?

The oak is very variable in condition – it can be very brittle if it’s been closer to the mine surface (nearer bacteria). The wood that’s deeper underground is more preserved; very dense, and dark in colour. The real alchemy I find in using the wood is the colouration throughout the grain, as the iron brought down to the mine has rusted down over a hundred years and made an iron-rich water that reacts with the tannins in the oak, leaving areas of black flowing through the grain like dark clouds. I never know what will be inside the wood until I remove the surfaces. I’ve taught myself to be very open to what the wood condition and colouring suggests as objects to make with it.

Were there any challenges?

The biggest challenge is getting the wood out of the mines. The tunnels linking the caverns are only about five feet high, and I’m six foot tall. The dense, sodden wood can be 30kg per piece. Once back in the workshop the challenge is to make objects while the wood is still wet, so I can use green woodworking techniques with an axe and carving knives. However carefully I dry the wood, it often splits, so I build the splitting in to my processes now and try to forsee where splits will be so I can ‘cold forge’ fill cracks with contrasting metals.

What inspired the shapes of the jugs?

The rugged, industrial looking jugs are a reaction to both the rough wood, the massive landscapes and the industry of the mines. If you imagine a roughly made slate trolley on rails underground, filled with slate and pushed along in the dark tunnels by a young boy, you see the inspiration I had for the shapes.

What's your favourite item from the collection and why?

As I started making pieces from the mine oak, I read about what working life was like in the mines and quarries of Snowdonia a century ago. There was a huge sense of pride and comradeship among the hard working quarrymen. The men self-selected into groups of five, a ‘Bargain Gang’ who would bid for work each month. In underground and cliff-side shelters called cabans, men rested between extracting slate, talking about politics, singing, reading poetry and of course drinking tea. I created a set of five caban jugs that imagine each member of the Bargain Gang; two rock men, a splitter, a dresser and a rybelwr (young apprentice learning the trade). For the two tough rock men, I used the rough weathered surface of the oak as the jug rims. The colours within the oak looked like a Welsh moorland landscape. These jugs somehow communicated everything I wanted to convey about the eerie landscapes of slate mines.

Do you have any further plans to work with salvaged wood?

The amount of inspiration I found from the mine oak versus what I would have created with fresh, green oak was quite surprising to me. I have plans to make further sets of mine oak functional objects that are even more closely linked to the rugged mountain landscapes of Snowdonia. I also want to look to the coast of north Wales with oak in mind; perhaps shipwreck oak?

Black and white images courtesy of National Slate Museum; other images by David White

Explore more of David White’s work at thewhittlings.co.uk

Woolly buggers and booby nymphs

Fly fishermen try to fool fish into thinking that tiny bits of hair, fur, feather and thread tied to a hook are in fact tasty insects. Broadly, there are two types of fishing fly: imitators, which are designed to look like real insects; and attractors, which often look like nothing on God’s green earth, but fish seem to like them anyway. Here are three outlandish patterns that caught (ahem) our eye

Woolly Bugger

Still one of the top patterns around, the Woolly Bugger is a popular and widely used fly for catching all sorts of fish. It has proven its effectiveness over many decades, which is perhaps largely down to its versatility – it looks like a lot of things that fish love to eat, from a drowning fly to a large nymph, or even a small baitfish.

Booby Nymph

This design, which is often irresistible to trout, came about following a cunning observation: that many emerging insects use a bubble of air to move from the lake bed to the surface, which then holds them in place while they transform into a flying insect. The basic booby is simple in design – a pair of foam boobies at the head, a short body and a fluffy tail of marabou feathers (to simulate the waving legs and wings as the nymph emerges). In still waters it can be ruthlessly effective. However, fly fishing purists consider the use of boobies to be as crude as the name, and akin to cheating. The issue is contentious enough that some lake owners ban boobies from their waters.

Tups Indispensable

Made for catching brown trout in the chalk streams of south west England, this fly was the brainchild of Devon tobacconist RS Austin in 1890. Its peculiar name stems from the fact that it utilised an unusual material in its manufacture; namely, wool taken from the testicles of a ram or ‘tup’. This fine substance was long noted by anglers for its “beautiful dusty yellow” colouring, as first recorded in Alexander Mackintosh’s 1806 book The Driffield Angler.

Words: Matt Jones, Illustrations: Louise Logsdon

This article originally featured in issue 9 of Ernest Journal, on sale now

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Issue 9 has landed

We’re very excited to announce that issue 9 is back from the printers, smelling delightfully inky, and will be hitting subscribers’ doormats and store shelves this week. Let’s take a look inside this brand new edition…

INVENTORY
The curious world of seaweed; silk escape and evasion maps; a history of chronocyclegraphs; sea journals through the ages; whistling languages of the world; Welsh slate mine art; the human microbiome reimagined as a coral reef; types of mirage; woolly buggers and booby nymphs; crown shyness; the story of pigment and boots for big hills.

BREAKING THROUGH
We have a childlike fascination with ice in its many forms. But onboard the icebreaker Otso, crashing through sea ice off the coast of Finland, Horatio Clare forges a different relationship with ice, an unpredictable, ever-moving frozen wasteland that is disappearing before our eyes. Illustrations: Owen D. Pomery.

LIVING WORKS
Hidden in a corner of woodland in North Wales is a circle of ash trees, which sculptor and land artist David Nash has fashioned into a living dome over more than 40 years. Planted as a beacon of hope, the artwork is facing an uncertain future. Steph Wetherell heads to the woods to learn more. Photos: Alex Poulter.

FINDING WILDERNESS
In 1991 John Hayward published a book called Dartmoor 365: An Exploration of Every One of the 365 Square Miles in the Dartmoor National Park, which split this landscape of wild moors and granite peaks into 365 individual grid squares, cataloguing the archaeology, mythology and curious features in each place. One grid square is particularly intriguing: G7. Here the author found nothing of note; he simply named it ‘wilderness’. Now, that’s just too tempting right? This is the story of three people who set out to find that wilderness. Words: Charles Fanshawe. Photos: Jim Marsden.

DEFENSIVE MEASURES
“Some years ago my village fire brigade got a call from a local farmer. He was curious about a strange steel hatch in one of his fields, perched on the cliffs above the North Sea. The firemen duly lifted it and the watch commander descended the ladder to find himself in an old RAF listening station from the Second World War. It was still full of equipment, as if they’d just got up and left one day. The firemen called the MOD and were told ‘Oh yes, we know that’s there – don’t worry about it.’“Joly Braime investigates British relics of war hiding in plain sight. Illustrations: Harry Sussams.

BLASKET ISLANDS
An archipelago of six inaccessible and strategically unimportant islands, the Blaskets rise as mountains directly from the Atlantic off the west coast of Ireland. Dan Cook introduces us to these islands, which were once the most westerly settlement in Europe, now a beautiful yet bleak reminder of lives eked out of the harsh landscapes. Words and photos: Dan Cook.

FAROE: LAND OF MAYBE
Journey with us to the Faroe Islands as we meet some remarkable people living in this remote outpost in the North Atlantic. Go in search of great skuas with conservation scientist Dr Sjúrður Hammer; explore the lesser-known coastline of Vágar while talking about mental wellbeing and conscious positivity with endurance runner, athlete and hiking guide Pól Sundskarð; meet seaweed pioneer Agnes Mols Mortessem and learn about age-old fermentation methods with charismatic chef Gutti Winther. Words: Jo Tinsley & Ruth Allen. Photos: Graeme Owsianski

A SCORE FOR A THOUSAND YEARS
Trinity Bouy Warf is set against the Thames and almost detached from the land by the curves of the River Lea and East India Dock Basin. Used in the 1800s by scientists, including Michael Faraday, to develop the beacons that mapped the nation’s coastline, its experimental lighthouse now houses Longplayer, a piece of music composed by The Pogues’ Jem Finer that’s set to play for a thousand years. Words: Joseph Delves.

JENNIFER & THE SHERPAS
In 1952, a year before the conquest of Everest, a young woman travelled with a British Expedition to the Himalayas. The remarkable account of her visit to the Sherpas captures a time before Nepal was opened to the West. Words: Matthew Jones. Illustrations: Jessica Smith.

A ROAD TO UNDERSTANDING
Hitchhiking isn’t known as a particularly safe or reliable way to travel, but is it as edgy and as action-packed as the stories profess? Samuel Firman, who thumbed a lift from Norfolk to China, shines a light on months spent looking hopeful by the roadside. Illustrations: Owen Gent.

Buy your copy of issue nine in our online store or start badgering your local stockist.

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Issue 9 goes to press

We’re excited to announce that issue 9 of Ernest Journal has gone to press!

A little under two weeks ago, we delivered issue nine into the inky clutches of the Heidelberg Speedmaster lithographic printer at Taylor Brothers, Bristol – which means that copies have now been printed and bound, and are currently on their way to our readers!

It’s always a pleasure to see the culmination of our efforts – many months of work from writers, photographers, illustrators and our own editors and designers – particularly when we get to see the hypnotic process of ink being pressed to paper at the oldest printers in Bristol.

A huge thank you to our subscribers and those of you who have pre-ordered issue 9 – your magazine will be with you very soon! And if you haven’t ordered your copy yet, you can do so via our online store or begin badgering your local independent magazine retailer.

Photos and film by Colin Nicholls.

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