Intrigued by the wide variety of marvelous decorative elements on Jomon pots, I made several pots based on their designs when I was working in clay. In his A History of the World in 100 Objects, Neil MacGregor chooses a Japanese Jomon clay vessel from approximately 5000 B.C.E. for one of his chapters.
Japan produced the world's first pots. A few thousand years later, the first known pots in the Middle East and North Africa were made, and pots in the Americas followed a few thousand years after that. The Jomon pots were created with coils of clay and decorated at first with fibers or cords and later with more elaborate designs. Food was first stored in baskets or in the ground, but the invention of clay pots created new possibilities. Not only did they protect food from insects and other animals, but pots also changed peoples' diets. The Jomon people could now cook seafood, meat and possibly nuts such as acorns as well. Japan may have been "the birthplace of the soup and the home of the stew." Mr. MacGregor's book was published by Penguin Books in 2010 and in 2011 by Viking Penguin in the United States.
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In his poem "Spring and All", William Carlos Williams wrote that "sluggish dazed spring" was approaching, and that today there is grass but tomorrow "the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf" will appear. Chilled by the "familiar" wind, plants "enter the new world naked, cold, uncertain" but that "Rooted, they grip down and begin to awaken."
Signs of spring are slowly beginning to emerge in the Pacific Northwest. Bulbs are pushing up through the soil and cautious leaves are appearing on some of the shrubs in my yard. Blossoming trees and birdsong are starting to define the days. Throughout the winter, the tree outside my door has sported a growing array of lichens, persisting year-round while the tree's leaves are still just a memory. In the January 17th article in his "Plantwatch" series for the Guardian newspaper, Paul Simons reported on lichens' unworldly survival abilities. Lichens attached outside the International Space Station for 18 months were able to photosynthesize despite being exposed to radiation, extreme temperatures, the vacuum of space and being without water. They can cope with radiation 12,000 times the lethal dose for humans. "Spring and All" is included in The Discovery of Poetry by Frances Mayes published by Harvest in 2001. Paul Simons writes a series of illuminating articles on plants in his "Plantwatch" columns for the Guardian newspaper. In his February 21st article, he wrote about the recovery of the redwoods at California's Big Basin state park after a wildfire blackened the trees and destroyed their foliage, raising fears that the redwoods might not survive. After two years, the forest is green again as new needles emerged, most of the growth coming from buds under the bark or from deep within the trees, with some having been dormant for more than a thousand years. The buds utilized sugars stored for up to 21 years to power this growth.
In an earlier article, Simons reveals the positive impact of mosses in combating air pollution and changes in our climate. Mosses can be found in such varied environments as deserts and polar areas. They act as pioneers in bare ground for successive waves of plants and store tons of carbon. Mosses absorb pollutants and dust along with moisture through their leaves. Soils covered with moss have more nutrients, better levels of decomposing materials, lower numbers of soil-borne plant diseases and are less prone to erosion than soil without mosses. Chile's renowned botanical garden was almost entirely destroyed by one of the devastating wildfires that recently swept across central Chile. A group of visitors managed to escape the fire by huddling on the park's front lawn, but a greenhouse keeper and three family members died in another part of the garden.
The botanical garden at Vina del Mar is one of the world's largest, and has preserved many endemic plant species as well as rare cactuses. A center for research, the one-and-a-half square mile garden contained more than a thousand species of trees, including some from Easter Island. The garden also contained a large collection of plants from the Juan Fernandez Islands. Chilean officials suspect that the fire destroying the garden was intentionally set. Almost forty square miles were burned on Friday by wildfires in Valparaiso province as well. High temperatures and drought exacerbated by the El Nino weather pattern along with unexpected high winds created the conditions for these catastrophic fires. The park's director is confident that the garden's native plants will recover once the rains return in May. Some exotic plants survived the fire, including the Ginkgo biloba trees from Japan in the "Garden of Peace" section that had also survived the atomic blast in Hiroshima. The information came from Jack Nicas' article "Tragedy, Resilience and a Miracle at Chile's Burned Botanical Garden" in the New York Times from February 5, 2024. |
AuthorI am a Northwest artist making collages from mulberry papers stamped by hand from original images that I have carved. Archives
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