The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [82]
He drew, and drew, and drew.
He went to Benedict Fludd, when his sketch-book was full, and showed him designs he had made from his drawings, which he thought might perhaps be worked into tiles. He had an idea for a series. An allover pattern of seakale leaves, and one of tangled seaweed, with keylike forms and plump bladders. A very delicate, lacy pattern, formalised one day when he had seen, outside the lonely church of St. Thomas Becket in Fairfield, that the dykes and the marsh grass were completely infested with crane-flies, long-winged, angular-legged, fragile.
He made a geometric web of their touching bodies. He made another with the pale little balls of the seakale seeds on their separate stalks, and one with fronds of fennel. He got interested in a principle of design that used the underlying geometrical structure of the natural forms to make a new formalised geometry. He marked them out as best he could with soft pencil on greyish furry paper. He said to Fludd that he knew something about pricking out paper designs which could be used to repeat patterns in biscuit, before glazing. But he didn’t know how to make glazes. He knew about pin-dust, which made pea-green, and various things that could be done with manganese. But he didn’t know how to get that grey-blue-green of the thicker kales. Or the ghost-colour of the crane-flies, which, he said daringly, it would be good to trace over cobalt colours, or maybe a sort of marshy green?
Fludd said he had an eye. He said his paper was rubbish, and was ruining his designs. Philip said it was all he had. Fludd opened a cupboard and thrust several sketch-pads into Philip’s hands, and a box of variegated pens and pencils. He said he thought they might make the tiles. They could try out glazes.
When they had a batch ready for firing, they reloaded the kiln, and sat up all night, feeding it with driftwood and sawn hop-poles. Geraint offered to help, which was unusual. He liked the drama of the cavern of flame and was interested in the product. The firing and the cooling were surprisingly successful. The kiln produced a row of tiles, blue, gold, green and scarlet, with the Dungeness patterns in webs of grey and charcoal and burnt umber over the colours, and another row, in a creamy glaze, with the patterns in crimson and blue and coppery-green. Philip was entranced. Pomona said they were very pretty. Geraint asked if they could make more—a lot more? “It’s not too hard,” said Fludd.
“You could sell them. Supply them. To architects and people. They’d make lovely hearths. It could be a steady income.”
Geraint was only fifteen, but he was in a perpetual anxiety, bordering on rage, about the absence of a steady income. He mentioned the tiles to Frank Mallett when he went for his history lesson. He asked Frank if he knew anyone who might need tiles to decorate a house, or a church. He said that if only there was a place to show the tiles—in Rye, in Winchelsea, in London, how did he know? But he knew it must be possible to find a way. My father is so impractical, said Geraint. He’s an artist, he doesn’t make things people can buy. But these tiles Philip has made look very nice and can be repeated, they say, over and over. Papa says they are very original. They may be, I don’t know. But I do know people will like them. Only how will they see them?
Frank and Dobbin discussed the matter with Geraint over luncheon. It was Dobbin who had the bright idea of enlisting Miss Dace. She would know people who might be prepared to display a few tiles—very elegantly—in a bay window, or in the window of an art shop, or even a