I'm beginning to feel a bit like the resident obituary writer where the world of art is concerned. One by one the big names who helped to create "Jamaican art" in its secondary phase, when the accent had turned to the indigenous, are leaving us.

Cecil Baugh

Only a few weeks ago, the mischievous, flamboyant painter Carl Abrahams died and now, a few days ago, that much quieter but important soul, the potter Cecil Baugh, departed at age 96.

His place in the arts was a dominant one. Whereas one can reel off a number of names in painting and drawing and sculpture whose influence spread out one way or another, Baugh was the central figure in the development of local ceramics and art pottery.

His years as tutor at the Jamaica School of Art put him in a position of influence once the craft began to develop beyond the primitive boundaries of yabbas, cooking pots and domestic utensils.

He appears to have been a gifted teacher. I can't recall anyone uttering a harsh word about him or spluttering in indignation at his treatment of them.

Indeed he received nothing but affection and adoration from the practising potters of today most of whom passed through his workshop at one point or other in their careers. And he was the right person to guide their development technically and imaginatively.

Apart from his own instinctive talent for the manipulation of that most tactile of media, clay, Mr Baugh, as seemed his natural title since we don't use comfortably the appelation "Master" (or "Maestro"), had the immense benefit of a British Council scholarship which enabled him to work for a period with the outstanding British potter, Bernard Leach.

Leach, virtually single-handedly, turned Cornwall into Britain's Mecca for some of its most exciting artists and craftsmen of the mid-twentieth century.

Leach had worked in Japan and been influenced by the technical development there and, perhaps more importantly, by the aesthetics of the Far East masters. Among these were the purity of form and the poise of the object, the subtleties of the glaze which were of prime importance before one began to focus on painted decoration or modelled curlicues.

So far as Europe was concerned, one must remember that the great producers of commercial pottery had been through periods of baroquerie, elaborate rococo fancies, dinner services sparkling with colour in the patterns or dripping with gold or silver in the decoration.

It was good fortune that Mr Baugh fell in with the Leach brand of orientalism because it allowed him to follow through in his home country, where native material was not likely to offer the delicacies of porcelain, work based on the available clay spun on the potter's wheel into bowls and vases and dishes with an easy balance. The eye was caught by the thing itself and not the elaborateness of the decoration.

In Jamaica, peasant forms focussed on bowls for cooking and storing - the king progenitor being the yabba - and the plates, cups, mugs and jugs and platters for serving.

Mr Baugh's finest pieces never lost touch with the earth from whence they came and only rarely, in moments of frivolity, did they reach for the sculptural.

Alas, by its very nature and since it is at its best when it is capable of use, pottery is fragile and often a source of sorrow to those who do not feel that the objects should be locked up in a glass case.

The situation may improve as more and more collectors are now their own domestic helpers and likely to handle with care what are truly objets d'art. Traditional helpers with their flicking dusters are the fastest road to destruction. The air is alive not with the sound of music but of "H'it drap " or "H'it pap awf".

My most precious Baugh was a huge glazed yabba which I used to put into service at Christmas to (a) 'rub up' the pudding with a wooden spoon; and later (b) to serve up on the buffet the dozens of fried whole fish which is traditional for my Christmas.

This procedure continued annually until about four years ago, after the festivities, when the slavey was transporting it back to its normal home in the cellar. A pair of those rubber-soled shoes, backs cut out to provide slap-slap slippers, did Mr Baugh in.

A trip on the steps and the gorgeous item lay on the concrete in about eight pieces never to be whole again. Somehow the coarse craquelure of Pattex between the sections wasn't in the least appealing!

Pieces like these are one-offs and copies can never be the same. Mr Baugh was by now not physically fit enough to embark on a replacement even if he had been so minded.

It wasn't like the small green vase, a minuscule work compared with the yabba that had suffered some 40 years before from 'H'it drap'. My mother asked him to make it again as a Christmas present for me, which he did; but it was never quite as beguiling as the original.
Now the Master has departed.

May his creations fare better in other homes than mine and may they be seen by artists yet to come so that this major contribution to the essence of something that can be called Jamaican Art will not be forgotten.

We have come a long way from the art works of visitors to the island sketchbooks in hand, the Hakewills, the Kidds, the Belisarios, Lionel Fawkes, Marianne North, the line stretches, and the beguiling records of birds and flowers (H Q Levy's attractive series of local flora painted mostly in his Brown's Town environs) by local gentry.

Mr Baugh, humble as he always seemed to be and in the line of a great tradition, was one of the foundation stones on which we have been building the new Jamaican culture.

POTTERS' SHOW

Coincidentally, The Association of Jamaican Potters gave a show last week at the Contemporary Art Gallery,1 Liguanea Ave, Kingston 6, which was due to close this weekend but, I guess, some pieces may still be on display for the next day or two.

While not really "in honour of...", Mr Baugh's influence can be discerned among the more senior exhibitors. One can see also their experiments taking place and their attempts to put a personal style on the pottery. We'll see how well some of it survives.

There was attractively subtle use of colour in a number of the pieces like the old rose/grey green Dish and Tall Vase, earthenware, by Jean Taylor Bushay and her grey/lavender Vase On Tripod, also earthenware. She also contributed a full tea set.

Tea must be in again for several exhibitors showed teapots (of varying practicality and some fated for the "H'it Drap") like Aretha Facey's stoneware Blue Teapot and Hollow Teapot; Philip Supersad did an art deco/star wars earthenware Teapot and an attractive piece called Gold Buttons.

Angella Brown arrived at soothing greens for her stoneware vases whose design themes are indicated by their titles Honeycomb and Backbone. Leonia McKoy (the Association's 2004 Bursary recipient) showed a stoneware Dish and a Double-Mouthed Bottle in blue-green and white. Patrick Hall's experiment, Shirt Pot (the pot wearing a shirt), didn't really come off but it was an idea.

Maxine Gray Reid did a smart Family Platter, freeform white earthenware, its pattern comprised of bold stick figures representing the family.

Mark Frederick's Pitcher combined the stoneware pot with a bamboo handle.

A more unusual essay was Waziri Johnson's bright red Interlinked(earthenware pot with plastic cord lacing at the top).Of course, you couldn't get much into the vase because of the lacing! His colour in the bowl My Roots, the bold contrast of grey and yellow, caught the eye.

Joan Rose artfully filled her Ikebana containers with floral arrangements that made one realise how good the simple could be made to look.

FATHERS' DAY FASHION

Edgar Gallimore offered a pleasant Sunday afternoon with refreshments for Family Time On Father's Day, June 19 at St Andrew Parish Church Hall where Petals & Promises and Haute Couture de Dawn combined for a fashion show interspersed with musical items by artistes who still have a sense of pitch, among them being Velia Espeut, Michael Harris, Charles Anthony Moore, Ossie 'D' and Stevie 'G' Karl Williams skilfully MCeed the thing together.

Looking at the shots in the press and media from recent fashion shows, one wondered seriously who the designs are being produced for and who buys them. In some cases, wisps of straw and other detritus seem to drift from the models; absolute fleshlessness seems demanded in order to wear all these gowns with alarming all-over slashes and cut-outs that make one sorry for the waiter who spills the soup by mistake, not to mention the wearer who could be scalded for life in a very intimate place.

Where indeed do these lasses wear the 'gowns'? Surely few are dancehall performers embarking on a show? On this occasion, the questions were answered because this event offered a quick look backwards and forwards at wedding dresses (with 'museum pieces' like the wedding dress of celebrities; in one case, Beverley Manley---a sort of Shaker-inspired straight cut with hints of an apron top).

On the whole, it seems however that the traditional continues to be the most popular; the gowns that make the groom think it's the wedding cake itself coming down the aisle.

As a result two gowns stood out in their deceptive simplicity, their airiness and light texture. One had a pattern of pale pastel clusters of blooms printed on the under-dress; the other, elegantly modelled by Noelle Kerr, slim-fitting, white with a dash of sparkle asymmetrically across the front.

For the men, waistcoats from the Eddie George collection were unveiled. Waistcoats seem to be making a comeback but, if you wondered what you're going to do with them in a milieu so anti-jacket-and-tie much less suits, the answer was offered.

Go on your diet for a while; hunt down a slinky black long-sleeved, clingy top, a pair of black slim-fit trousers and bombs away! Button the waistcoat over and step out to the party.

(Petals & Promises is at Shop 20, The Springs; Haute Couture de Dawn at 7th Avenue Plaza.)

JMTC'S - THE WIZ

Other intimations of things to come were presented by the Jamaica Musical Theatre Company Tuesday evening at the Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts, UWI.

It was an introduction to The Wiz, which it will present as its 2005 annual musical, directed this time by Robin Baston, with Maurice Bryan/O'neil Peart, Sakina Deer/Danielle Stiebel, Patria-Kaye Aarons/Lawrence Woodham, Neville Dallen/Charles Moore, Rory Frankson/Kibwe Smith. Peter Ashbourne is musical director.

The show runs Fridays, Saturdays & Sundays July 8 to August 14.
Although there is some relationship to L Frank Baum's children's story The Wizard of Oz, don't go expecting to hear Somewhere Over The Rainbow and the rest of the Harold Arlen/E Y Harburg's unforgettable score (for the Judy Garland movie).

This is the modern black disco version, set in New York environs, by William F Brown and Charlie Smalls which had considerable success on Broadway in its time mainly due to the Caribbean input of Trinidadian Geoffery Holder, whose designs were eye-popping and whose direction won him a Tony Award.

The film version of The Wiz, done in 1978, starred, among others, Michael Jackson of litigation fame as the Scarecrow, and a lovely Lena Horne as the good witch Glenda but Diana Ross, then in her mid-30s, playing Dorothy, the little girl blown by a tornado to the Land of Oz, just about sank the vessel.

(c)Norman Rae 2005

Feeding the multitude

DANGEROUS PETS

Pepper Pot