tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post1797336083195053577..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: In the Foundry (An Education)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-52917406539864058272012-06-12T05:48:50.119-07:002012-06-12T05:48:50.119-07:00For the lad at the centre of this bell-casting sce...For the lad at the centre of this bell-casting scene, by the by, the whole project has been a matter of great risk and doubt and faith with more than a bit of wishful thinking mixed in.<br /><br />(His facial resemblance to Fernando El Niño Torres reminds me of the deceptive strength of the appearance of innocence in any context; it seems almost to change the world, even when it doesn't.)<br /><br />The dark silent figure who briefly pauses at the brink of the casting-pit to observe the scene is the master icon painter, Andrei Rublev, traveling incognito through a world of brutality and mystery and miracle.<br /><br />Interested readers are encouraged to watch the whole of this great film. The erection and christening of the bell is another scene of delirious, dizzying power.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-4523483847588990052012-06-12T05:30:49.395-07:002012-06-12T05:30:49.395-07:00Agree with Wooden Boy that the casting of a bell w...Agree with Wooden Boy that the casting of a bell would be a wondrous thing to be a part of, at least the thought of it.<br /><br />Among the most stirring scenes in the history of film must surely be the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyi3diimL_8" rel="nofollow">bell-casting scene</a> in Tarkovsky's magisterial Andrei Rublev.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-88028865077691687302012-06-12T05:22:46.280-07:002012-06-12T05:22:46.280-07:00In case there lingers some confusion on the usage,...In case there lingers some confusion on the usage, I had not meant to suggest that foundries are dumb (though of course, technically they are just that; their speech is rather a sort of mute testimony to the history of industrialization, which they have witnessed with those great staring eyes).<br /><br />I was playing on the meaning of dumbfounded as astonished.<br /><br />In this sense the dumb foundry might be that place of conditioning and environment and education in the ways of the world in which everyone comes to age.<br /><br />It seems perhaps there is a metaphor of some sort at work here.<br /><br />"For me, those wide open eyes are attending -- to the forces pressing in, to the damage, to the body taking shape"<br /><br />Yes.<br /><br />A bit of fact while we are here.<br /><br />Soho Foundry was built at the edge of the Birmingham Canal at Smethwick in the West Midlands on land bought in 1795 by James Watt and Mathew Boulton for the purpose of manufacturing steam engines. The Foundry was opened in 1796. By 1840 James Watt Junior owned the factory after the death of the founding Boulton and Watt. He died in 1848 and his place was taken by H. W. Blake and the name changed from Soho Foundry to James Watt & Co. In 1857 the screw engines for the steamship SS Great Eastern were built at the foundry. In 1860 a new mint was started at the Foundry, the Manufactory having closed in 1850. In 1895 W & T Avery Ltd acquired the Foundry as a going concern. It is now the home of Avery Weigh-Tronix, who make weighing scales. <br /><br />A bit of this history is remembered in that <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Blue_plaque_Soho_Foundry.jpg" rel="nofollow">blue plaque</a> which we can make out at the right of the Soho Foundry main gate.<br /><br />"The road from London to Scotland via Northampton and Manchester today runs through the Pennine coalfield with its series of basins where once men and machines crowded together and where there sprang up almost overnight the most dynamic and 'satanic' of industrial conurbations. The evidence is still visible there today: every coal basin has its own specialty, its types of industry, its own history and its own great city -- Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield -- which grew up simultaneously, shifting the industrial balance of England to the north. Here industrialization and urbanization preceded at breakneck speed; the various Black Countries of England were machines devouring and disorienting the populations who flocked to them. Geography is not of course the only explanation for these mighty constructions, but it helps us to see more clearly the harsh determinism exerted by coal, the constraints of communications, the role of manpower resources and, too, the heavy weight of the past. Perhaps the brutal features of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England essentially needed some kind of social vacuum as their site."<br /><br />-- Fernand Braudel: The Perspective of the World (Le Temps de Monde), 1979 (Vol III of Civilization & Capitalism: 15th-18th Century)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-67787697078565895522012-06-12T05:05:50.892-07:002012-06-12T05:05:50.892-07:00Casting bells; what a wonderful thing to have been...Casting bells; what a wonderful thing to have been a part of.Mose23https://www.blogger.com/profile/01100756913131511440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-75542634471938619562012-06-11T21:47:39.227-07:002012-06-11T21:47:39.227-07:00Nothing "dumb" about the foundry i worke...Nothing "dumb" about the foundry i worked in after art college http://www.whitechapelbellfoundry.co.uk/ making church bells<br /><br />Truly olde worlde The clients would be there at a casting and the bell makers and the blacksmith would get a beer at the end of it<br /><br /><br />The casting was with traditional materials in steel reinforced loam moulds made from animal manure and horse hair mixed in and polished with graphite<br /><br />a similar process in general terms but very different in character to industrial work<br /><br />Casting after often months of work and the understanding that the work could be easily spoiled by carelessness took on the character of a ritual and i very definitely experienced it as such as part of a process no longer myself<br /><br />It paid peanuts but i got to do some of my own bronze casting there tooAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-84787935361909453032012-06-11T14:57:35.285-07:002012-06-11T14:57:35.285-07:00For me, those wide open eyes are attending - to th...For me, those wide open eyes are attending - to the forces pressing in, to the damage, to the body taking shape<br /><br />The body of the poem, dense on the page, is something to attend to. It's fierce and beautiful.<br /><br />I've read it three or four times today, the last line particularly I'm still turning over.<br /><br />A living work; a rare thing now.Mose23https://www.blogger.com/profile/01100756913131511440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-6604990856264389182012-06-11T08:53:16.467-07:002012-06-11T08:53:16.467-07:00I am dumbfounded, Master. The past has vanished. I...I am dumbfounded, Master. The past has vanished. I remember nothing. Not even the early industrial revolution job in crowd control at the Roller Derby, 11th and Wabash. Only those great staring archaic eyes.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-53725173991218187092012-06-11T08:39:33.697-07:002012-06-11T08:39:33.697-07:00"Look into my eyes, you are getting very, ver..."Look into my eyes, you are getting very, very sleepy—soon you will go into a deep trance out of which you will wake only when I snap my fingers and when I do, you will remember nothing."—from <i>The Oneiric Teachings of the Grand Schoolmaster Morpheus.</i><br /><br />In other words, the eyes have it.vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras)https://www.blogger.com/profile/14515165428574974933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-41479647039279802492012-06-11T08:21:15.990-07:002012-06-11T08:21:15.990-07:00It did occur to me that when we go to enroll at th...It did occur to me that when we go to enroll at the Foundry School it might be best to be familiar with a bit of the previous field research in an institution which has now closed its doors forever -- but not so long as someone remembers -- see the bit I've just tacked on to the lower fringe of picnic carpet (pure synthetic carbon flooring) from the writings of Henry Green (Henry Yorke). Who both worked on the floor of a Birmingham foundry, and came to manage and own it.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-26131401567406032292012-06-11T07:34:31.841-07:002012-06-11T07:34:31.841-07:00I didn't know who I was
but it didn't seem...I didn't know who I was<br />but it didn't seem to matter.<br />Then, it was the ragged carpet,<br />the blanket from home--<br />a good place to sleep<br />during the day<br />beside the old fire.Susan Kay Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16277139119869470939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-86643436194475803272012-06-11T06:30:29.210-07:002012-06-11T06:30:29.210-07:00Tom,
Pretty scary, the two black holes of those &...Tom,<br /><br />Pretty scary, the two black holes of those "eyes wide open" in the iron mask.<br /><br />6.11<br /><br />light coming into sky above still black <br />ridge, white half moon next to branches<br />in foreground, sound of wave in channel<br /><br /> taking shape on the horizon,<br /> should therefore show<br /><br /> other words, color and form,<br /> some “abstract” sense<br /><br />silver line of sun reflected in channel,<br />whiteness of moon in cloudless blue skySTEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-48302939544481231902012-06-11T05:00:34.333-07:002012-06-11T05:00:34.333-07:00I recall seeing those lifeless eyes in my summer j...I recall seeing those lifeless eyes in my summer job days at Stelco (Hamilton, Ontario): replacing brick walls in open hearths you worked in only 10 mins. at a time.<br /><br />University tuition earned in hell (maybe those Quebec protesters have got it right!)<br /><br />Stelco, now named American Steel, stands virtually empty and idleConrad DiDiodatohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18312831623791642286noreply@blogger.com