Back in July 2021 I popped along to the Royal Academy in London to see their summer exhibition, as I do most years. However, this was a particularly important one for me because my photographer brother Si had a piece on display.
Sculptor Tim Shaw had produced an extraordinary set of exhibits for the exhibition. The first was a full-size figure called Lifting the Curse. The story goes that plans for an exhibition of work by famed artist partnership Gilbert and George were once turned down by the RA. And so the duo returned their medals and certificates and gave up their RA membership stating: 'We curse the Royal Academy and all its members.' As one of these 'cursed' RA members, Tim decided to fight back. So he created a totem figure from tree branches tied to a welded metal frame, with a belly full of charcoal and a heart made from charred wood and wrapped in copper. On the penultimate day of its completion, a shamanic practitioner carried out a ritual 'giving focus and potency to the work' in order to ward off the alleged curse.
To misquote Tangina (played by Zelda Rubinstein) in the 1982 film Poltergeist: 'This Academy is clean'.
The second piece Tim had on display was a series of bronze figures called The Mummers' Tongue Goes Whoring Amongst The People (from a line in a poem by Seamus Heaney) and, to accompany the display of the bronzes, he commissioned my brother Si to take a moody photo using a Victorian camera and wetplate film developing techniques (his speciality). As I understand it, the idea was to give the figures a suggestion of great age.
You can see more photos on my previous blogpost (see here).
Anyway, these 'Mummer' figures stuck with me and I toyed, for a while, with sculpting a series of figurines based on traditional folk festival costumes like the Dorset Ooser or the South Queensferry Burry Man. I even started to create a figure of the dragon costume worn during Helston's annual Hal an Tow (see here).
But then I became concerned that if I didn't get the figures 100% right, I'd be in for a lot of grief - people are very passionate about preserving these ancient customs and I imagined they would be very vocal if I did their costumes a disservice.
So I thought to myself ... what if I created figures from an entirely fictitious folk festival or festivals? I already had the perfect vehicle. I had a fictional county to play with.
A few years back I wrote a trilogy of comic novels - A Murder to Die for, The Diabolical Club and Cockerings - all based in South Herewardshire, a county in the westcountry somewhere sort of Dorset-Somerset-Gloucester-ish. In The Diabolical Club we learn that the county has a penchant for folk festivals and secret societies so it was the perfect place in which to set my creations loose.
So, out came the sketchbook and the first two costumes to emerge that took my fancy were The Jangler and Crimpy Jack:
The Jangler was loosely based on the Dorset Ooser, a curious wooden head from Melbury Osmond. The sculpted head - which was hollow and therefore, presumably, intended to be worn - was first brought to public attention in 1891, when it was owned by the Cave family. But, after travelling with Edward Cave to Somerset in 1897, the Ooser went missing and has never been found. However, photos and illustrations do exist and it appeared on the cover of a book that had a huge influence on me in my childhood - Time Life Books' Folklore Myths and Legends of Britain. I inherited this copy (below) from my late father and still have it today. It's become quite collectible in recent years. Meanwhile, the Ooser costume has since been recreated and is used in modern folk festivals and Mummers' plays.
I found a nice core of wood - a piece of old broom handle - and covered it in tin foil to bulk out the shape. Then I dressed it with thin layers of Original Sculpey polymer clay that I snipped with fine scissors to get a raggedy straw effect - the idea was to mimic costumes like that of the Whittlesea Straw Bear.
I built up the layers starting from the bottom and moving up to the neck. I then baked the body for 20 mins at 140C in the oven.
Once cooled I stuck a round flint to the neck as the base for the head and covered it in clay. The hessian type texture was done by pushing a dishcloth into the surface. The ropes were made by rolling out two long 'snakes of clay' and twisting them around each other. I then baked the figure again. That's the great thing about polymer clay - you can bake it multiple times and keep adding fresh material to the sculpt.
I then made a pair of ram-style horns and got them slightly wrong so they don't match. But that fits with the overall feel of a naive art/folk costume that would have been made by local people, not artists. I added more ropes and sculpted some sleigh bells to hang from them. A third bake and The Jangler was complete.
The inspiration for Crimpy Jack came simply from me being a proud Cornishman. Despite the Cornish pasty being the most iconic food from the Duchy there is not, to my knowledge, any folk costume that celebrates this tasty snack. So I decided to make one. The name came from the crimped pastry (of course) and because Cornish lads are traditionally known as 'Jacks' or 'Janners'.
I began by making several pasties of different sizes using a mix of Super Sculpey and Original sculpey. Then I made an armature for the body from wire and tin foil and covered it with Original Sculpey.
I knew the big pasty would form the head but wasn't sure where the other pasties would go ... hands? Feet? Chest plates? I doodled for a bit and then realised that I could use them to form a face.
The torso was then covered with small flat clay rectangles to simulate the strips of rag worn by many Mummers and Morris dancers. To ensure they stuck I used Sculpey clay adhesive - basically a liquid polymer clay that also bakes hard.
I then attached the head to the body and baked it. I admit that I did slightly over-bake it so there are some singed areas. But they'll look fine after painting.
I created a pasty 'axe' using an oak twig and Sculpey. Long poles are a common feature of many folk events (the biggest being Maypoles of course). In my home town of Helston, Cornwall, the 8th of May is celebrated with Flora Day and one element of this is the
Hal An Tow - a kind of musical Mumming play featuring dragons, demons, saints and green men (you can watch the whole thing on an
earlier blogpost here). The name 'Hal An Tow' comes from the Cornish language name for a garlanded pole. The 'spirit of the pasty' had to have his own version but garlanded with a tasty pastry-encased snack of steak, potatoes, swede and onion. Oh, and I changed the nose as it didn't quite work and gave him a final bake.
Now it was time to paint.
I decided that I rather liked the idea of making them look like bronzes. So they were sprayed with a black primer and then given a light 'zenithal highlight' dusting of gold. I bought some cheap undecorated wooden coasters as display bases and stuck the figures to them with a two part epoxy glue.
The first two cast members of my imaginary folk festival were now complete.
Now onto the next ...
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