This collection was inspired by the imagery of the poem Kubla Khan. Here is what I first wrote about it:
Sometime in last few years of the 18th century, in a world as uncertain and ravaged by turmoil as it is and has always been - poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge developed an upset stomach. In an era when opiate was the miracle cure-all prescribed for absolutely any minor ailment, he knocked back some fine milk of the poppy while in a cottage farmhouse in the English Moors, and went on to wake from his reveries with a fully composed, perfectly astounding poem that came to him, by his own admission, while unconscious - a poem he called Kubla Khan: or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment.
On the surface of the poem - Coleridge describes in the most musical and rousing way, a ‘pleasure dome’ in an invented supernatural orient ‘Xanadu’. While Kubla Khan the man really did exist, this poem is a complete flight of fancy, almost having a sci-fi edge stunningly ahead of its time. Kubla Khan is described to have ordered the building of an extravagant pleasure dome that was always sunny, filled with magic and the maze of a river which progresses through icy caves and drops into a dark and lifeless sea. The musicality of his lines is brilliant, as is the rich fantastical imagery.
Taking literal visual cue from the lines in the poem, I wanted to add with this collection to this ‘fragment from a dream’ that one romantic clever man, three hundred years ago in a lonely farmhouse in Somerset, spewed out in a frantic post-opium haze. I wanted to join the bevy of artists before me who were moved to draw out this strange world - in my own special medium and for the first time in cloisonne.
A Damsel with A Dulcimer Necklace - Cloisonne enamel, opal, garnet strand, (private collection)
”𝘈 𝘥𝘢𝘮𝘴𝘦𝘭 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘢 𝘥𝘶𝘭𝘤𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘳
𝘐𝘯 𝘢 𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘐 𝘴𝘢𝘸:
𝘐𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘢𝘯 𝘈𝘣𝘺𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘢𝘯 𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘥,
𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘶𝘭𝘤𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘺𝘦𝘥,
𝘚𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵 𝘈𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘢.”
These lines from the poem Kubla Khan are what inspired this piece, my most complex cloisonné yet. I had the exact composition in my mind for so long, a heady blend of my favourite inspirations - turn of century illustrators, with their huge swathes of negative space and very obviously unapologetic centre-compositions. They sure let you have it and this is what I was going for with this design. I wanted to let you have it.
The ‘damsel in a vision’ that Coleridge speaks of in the poem is unreal, a figment of his imagination and opium-induced daymares. But with his poem he’s managed to conjure her up for you and I, bringing her to life in our heads and not only her, but her song - her own poem. She is conjuring too. It’s an ‘inception’, a dream within a dream within a dream, flowering ever-outwards like a mandala. I’ve tried to make my version solid for you - indulging in pinks, which are so prized in vitreous enamel (insider scoop, that), and giving her clothing and environment detail. I could not tell you how long I spent just bending the wires, then laying them just so. Her face alone was a journey. I kept redoing it.
I indicated her ‘song’ by liquid gold lines. You can hear it in your heads. I put a shooting star over Mount Abora, just because. I set her into a more open setting, so more light would gleam and reflect off of the enamels. The wide bail has been set with a fiery white opal - and also a first for me, she comes on a juicy garnet double strand necklace, with handmade adjustable end-chains.
Xanadu, title piece, personal collection.
𝑰𝒏 𝑿𝒂𝒏𝒂𝒅𝒖 𝒅𝒊𝒅 𝑲𝒖𝒃𝒍𝒂 𝑲𝒉𝒂𝒏
𝑨 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒚 𝒑𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒖𝒓𝒆-𝒅𝒐𝒎𝒆 𝒅𝒆𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒆:
𝑾𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝑨𝒍𝒑𝒉, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒂𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒅 𝒓𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒓, 𝒓𝒂𝒏
𝑻𝒉𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉 𝒄𝒂𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒏𝒔 𝒎𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒖𝒓𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝒎𝒂𝒏
𝑫𝒐𝒘𝒏 𝒕𝒐 𝒂 𝒔𝒖𝒏𝒍𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒔𝒆𝒂."
This 'pleasure-dome' from one of the English languages most famous poems lives entirely rent free in the minds of romantic types like myself since Coleridge wrote this strange, opium-induced poem. The rich imagery he uses invites the imagination to fill the gaps - and many artists have, over the years, rendered Xanadu as their fantasy has seen it. A magical dome of perpetual sunlight coupled with bright icy caves and an underground, completely-dark sea - it fires up the imagination. That perfect contrast of beauty and foreboding, beauty and menace that runs hauntingly through this poem invites us to dream more.
Here is my encapsulation of the scene - 'trapped' insidw a Laudanum (tincture of opium) bottle, to symbolise the poem's intoxicant trigger.
Mount Abora
Private Collection
𝘔𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵 𝘈𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘢 never existed - In opium-poppy-pinks, sea blues and warm gold is how I chose to represent this dream-within-a-dream mystical mountain. She rises from the 'song' of the damsel inside a poem, and in the larger of the pieces I represented the song as I chose to represent sound in this collection - via the medium of textured glass a la Munch's 'Scream'. To me this piece represents - the ability (or inability?) of the artist to allow another person to see what is in their heads. This is my Mount Abora as I imagined it from Coleridge's words, as he has envisioned it from the song inside his own poem. It's like turning my nanna's 3-way mirror just so to create an endless version of the same thing but each entirely incorporeal, occupying no extra space.
But Oh! That Deep Romantic Chasm
How to represent 'sound' in glass? This was my quandary, when I came to interpret my favourite stanza
“𝘉𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘩! 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘦𝘦𝘱 𝘳𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘴𝘮 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘴𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥
𝘋𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘢 𝘤𝘦𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳!
𝘈 𝘴𝘢𝘷𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦! 𝘢𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥
𝘈𝘴 𝘦’𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝘢 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘰𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥
𝘉𝘺 𝘸𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘸𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘯-𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳!”
I wanted the piece not to be just a representation of the chasm under a waning moon, but also to represent what is happening 'off-screen', that oh so mysterious sensuous wailing of a woman for her demon lover. So I introduced texture to make the sky alive. I absolutely love how the first piece came out, and I made a smaller version for a daintier representation. I can say with some certainty nobody's ever tried to represent this particular scene from this particular poem in cloisonne vitreous enamel before (in fact, illustrations of this scene in general are lacking) so I am pleased to have introduced one more bit of imagery for Kubla Khan into the world as my homage.
Laudanum Bottle Ring
It's impossible to split the poem 𝘒𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘢 𝘒𝘩𝘢𝘯, the inspiration for my upcoming collection 𝘟𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘥𝘶, from the myth of its origins. By the poet Coleridge's own admission, while stuck in the countryside of England in the dregs of the 18th century, he was overcome with a bout of dysentery and turned to opium for relief, as was normal in those days. He fell asleep while reading a book about the exploits of the real Kubla Khan only to come into a half-dream of poetic visions and wake up frantic to write and grasp this fully-formed epic poem before the stain left by the dream could fade and be gone forever. Unfortunately for us, the poet was called away on some mundane errand before he could finish writing it all down, which is why his vision of a fantastical 𝘟𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘥𝘶 comes to us only as a strange fragment.
As a nod to the poem's origins, I integrated the opium poppy and opium-poppy colours into a few of my pieces for this collection. This piece is my most manifest ode to it - its 'laudanum bottle' shape containing a cloisonné enamel poppy on a sea of blue.