Spoon (Domestic Ponge)

 

Dangled heavily from a free-standing hook by a fashioned tube arc of shining grey steel, the handsome implement stays ready for use at any time. Hung might be more correct than dangled, placed even more accurate as it never turns idly in position with a visiting breeze but rather remains fixed freely firm in the air due to weight and gravity like the escutcheon above a palace gate. Its elevation with others of its kind, the sombre ladles and grey-day spatulas in a position at arm’s length from the action, is a reminder of its critical role at the given moment when pots boil or saucepans simmer. Then it moves in to play its part in the culinary operation that forever tantalises with the belief in a flavour perfection, a more pleasurable taste outcome. It is a wonder and necessity, an ancient invention that has gone through varying permutations only modernist design, then computer templates, could render with such a level of visual as well as practical originality. Twelve centimetres of stainless steel grip, a cylindrical handhold shining dully above the kitchen fray, then extends another twelve centimetres of tapering handle easy to balance, that then dips and spreads into a gorgeous oval spoon, broad and shallow, decoratively smelted with a crosshatch of 66 small circular slots. Their grid, held to the light, makes diamond shapes that could be a magnified eye of a fly or set of equidistant raindrops on a pond. Their spacing apart allows for liquid to flow through and the scooped contents of the cauldron to remain aloft, the steaming cubes of potato or hot bright pearls of Lebanese couscous that must be separated from the soupy base. Slots, contrarily, being a cause for discussion, as what is a slot. A long narrow hole, that’s true, an elongated depression, an extended aperture, none of which accounts for roundness, or roundness in great numbers. Manufacturers are at odds as to what to call a slotted spoon, some opting for sale purposes for their own synonym: perforated serving spoon, premium wide skimmer, culinary plating spoon, metal mesh sieve ladle, colander scooper, steel spider strainer. The strain shows and there isn’t anyway time as the contents of the bubbling preparation need attending to now. Nipping and scraping of the goodness collecting at the edges, stirring and turning of the Earth’s produce cooking through nicely thank you very much to the optimum, loading and lifting of the same above the plumbline for ocular and olfactory examination, this is the moment of the thingummyjig plucked from its hoity toity highness on the kitchen rack, rummaging delicately with the end product of a recipe known or found, borrowed, enhanced, turned round about, spiced up, or down, in the thick of the place sometimes referred to as too hot to handle.   

Seashell (January)

[For Carol O’Connor] This January I re-read Francis Ponge, his ‘Notes pour un coquillage’ (1932). The argument goes that though a seashell is small, it’s a monument “colossal et précieux” compared with sand grains, more mysterious than any human monument. Impressively, a whole creature lives inside this monument. Human monuments (“Rome et Nîmes”) remind him of skeleton parts, not the same as the home of a hermit crab. Ponge imagines the impossible colossus that inhabited such ancient places. He decides that our monument is language, made from “la véritable sécrétion commune”, before describing the returning of all life into sand. 

Fan (Domestic Ponge)

Fan (Domestic Ponge)

Three curled blades with smooth graded edges and scalloped surfaces are locked in to a central revolving axis, so that they resemble the leaves of one enormous black clover. Air flows freely through the brick grill on the outside wall, through and around the fantastic triumvirate, not as in diagrams by way of ideal arrow directions, but in any way that air moves into an available space, and thus into the happy haunt of more meditative moments. In this place of airiness and light the artfully constructed clover takes on a cumbersome and utilitarian feel that can make someone uneasy or, at least, jolt them back to reality. All of this is very difficult to see because it is fitted with a circular plastic grid that is attached to the wall, both to obscure the vicious miniature reminder of the industrial revolution there in the very midst of domestic life, but also to repel all reminder of our more distant and even uglier victories over the insect queendoms. Lint and the singular mosquito have collected without choice along the finer parallels of this grid, leaving a murky look. Something very shadowy is back there, so keep the circle on. If the blades began rotating they would build in revolving waves until suddenly into wombly firmness spinning, into airy thinness beating. Adults do it, adolescents do it, even very tiny children with the assistance of special laminated lids do it, and after they’ve done it they will often go to the manoeuvrable dimple in the centre of the white gleaming plate near the door, switch it, and so ignite the jolly decent gyrations of the ornate triumvirate. Irrevocably another sitting of Parliament has dumped incredible rubbish down the system. Imperceptibly, the noisome Neapolitan pollution is sucked from the tiniest room. A pretty, laced sachet of lavender beads and a cute bowl of rose soap discs help recall more pleasant times. Also, clear daylight is seen through the wall for the first time ever, as the speed of the blades, already returning the place to some semblance of normality, is such that they vanish, giving the buoyant observer an insight into the wires and grids that keep the gadget going. Through the brick grill a hotchpotch of blue and fluffy clouds is in evidence, presumably wafting off with the unsightly odour.

[Circa 1991-92]

Brush (Domestic Ponge)

Brush (Domestic Ponge)

The red-moulded handle, where thumb and index can pinch the implement hard as the surplus detritus is swept up, narrows and then straightens out into a long oblong tongue that is perforated for the incision of plastic tufts. Twenty or so pliable but tough lengths of white plastic hair, about half the length of a middle finger, are tied together at one end and inserted into one of the perforations. The process is organised automatically and systematically, so thirty-three perforations on the oblong tongue have inserted these secured bundles of artificial wiry hair, or fibre. Originally they looked like rows of little geysers designed and installed by the meticulous council of a city in need of a fountain for its new shopping complex. Now the geysers are dishevelled; they shoot out all over the place, sprockets are missing, and at the most-used end they have been reduced to a leaning, grey miasma. PL-1492 is its code, embossed on the bridge of the handle, well on into middle age. The date of the ‘discovery’ of America is purely random. The plush, stiff ends of the bristles are beaten down through overwork. They have bent, some have split ends, some have been cut back and harrowed, some have been cut to the bone. They are matted and tangled in places, with no one to look after them. Held to the light it is now difficult to penetrate the splay of fibrils. At the purposeful end, where they are appreciably beaten down and hardened little battlers, puffy clouds of grey lint shot through with dribs of cotton adhere with offensive familiarity. Tiny pieces of wood chip seem to have got in amongst the woollier areas of experience. One or two human hairs have taken a grip and float above the fray, lithe and immoveable, like some mobile curlicues appended by a calligrapher for purely no reason at all. Decoration, hardly. A practical thing, it rests utterly attached to its matching red tray, under the laundry trough.

[Circa 1991-92]