The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [156]
Philip started to make a drawing of it. He had learned his dislike of pouting cupids and what he called “pottery frills” from Benedict Fludd. He thought he might be able to tempt him out of bed with this monstrous vision. The visitors jostled him, and occasionally asked to see what he was doing. A young man, about his own age, in a workman’s overall, came from inside the stand, and asked to see what Philip was drawing. He commented on Philip’s draughtsmanship in French, of which Philip understood not a word, but the tone was both friendly and admiring. Philip said, in English, that he didn’t speak French. He put down his pad and pencil, and demonstrated with mime that he was a potter, running his fingers inside the imagined cylinder of imagined clay on an imagined wheel. The Frenchman laughed, and mimed the painting of fine flowers with a fine brush on a close surface. Philip pointed to himself and said “Philip Warren.” “Philippe Duval,” said the Frenchman. “Venez voir ce que nous avons fait.”
He showed Philip soft-paste porcelain vases, with copper flambé glazes, and spindle-shaped, or pillar-shaped, vases, painted on biscuit, one with peonies, one with bellwort. Philip took notes and copied the bellwort into his sketch-book. There were all sorts of new uses of metallic glazes, making surfaces like a shot silk, or silk brocade—he mimed admiration of this, and Philippe said in French that these were fiendishly difficult, which Philip understood. There was also a very good attempt at the secret Chinese red—“Chinese,” said Philip. “Oui, chinois,” said Philippe. And crackleware in silver and gold. It was all very dressy, Philip thought.
And then Philippe brought out from a hidden corner some quite different pieces, the earlier and famous Gien reproductions of Renaissance Italian majolica, and Philip fell in love. He loved the colours—sandy yellow-gold and indigo-blue and a sage-green glowing on a black ground, or delicate on a white glaze. He loved the creatures who were entwined and climbing and gesturing on the surfaces, horned Pans with high pointed ears and pointed beards, whose shaggy hips below the waist ran into formal foliage, blue, gold and green. He liked the formal spiralling fronds of golden apple boughs and fine threaded tendrils and trumpets. There were lithe golden boys with wicked grins and blue dragons with fish-tailed children—not fat putti, laughing yellow-gold boys—and fauns, and dolphins, all swiftly done, all bright and glowing. He was put in mind of his sheaf of drawings of the Gloucester Candlestick, with the men and monkeys and dragons, and had the glimmering of an idea of a way he could make new patterns of his own, combining both on the branches of an eternal tree with space for everyone. He asked Philippe for time to draw one or two. “Arabesques,” said Philippe. He drew for Philip an image of a different clock, decorated with these creatures, and showed him the very interesting design on the base of this—a Greek wave-fret, a wild-strawberry hanging.
They took a cup of coffee in a small café and communicated by drawing, taking turns—Philip drew the patterns on his Dungeness tiles, the Old Man’s Beard and the fennel, and Philippe drew more creatures, and bowls with handles like dragons and harpies entwined with rinceaux. Philip drew Fludd’s tadpoles but couldn’t think how to explain Fludd. So he drew a master-potter at a wheel, and an apprentice with a broom, and identified himself as the apprentice,