Recreating perfection

What would the “perfect” horse chestnut or pine cone look like? Inspired by his walks in the South Downs, artist Malcolm Trollope-Davis sought to answer this question by keenly observing growth patterns in the minutiae of the natural world around him. He invites us into his Brighton studio to tell us more…

Malcolm Trollope-Davis’ original ‘Technature’ drawing of a horse chestnut

Malcolm, we love the beautiful simplicity of your Technature designs. What inspired you to create them?

This may sound strange but what triggered the concept was spending most of my adult life illustrating, creating, using and being immersed in computer technology. It’s an unavoidable side of my professional life as it allows you to create exceptionally detailed and precise work. I believe our exposure to computers affects the way we think and feel. So accustomed to seeing perfectly created shapes, I started looking for them in nature during my walks in the South Downs.

Of course "perfect" shapes and forms are hard to find in nature (that's the beauty of nature), but I began to observe acorns and other seeds and attempted to recreate their growth code. I counted the spikes on a horse chestnut and studied the arrangement of its pattern. In my recreation of this I drew a perfect spike protruding from its casing every 45 degrees, evenly spaced from each other. Of course you’d never find a chestnut as perfect as that in nature but I guess I was curious to see what it would look like. For my acorn, I gave it a sort of machine-tooled cup pattern. The end results seemed to be a good balance of technical and nature, hence the ‘Technature’ title of my collection.

Do you often turn to nature for inspiration?

More and more, the older I get! There's something rewarding about recreating the things surrounding you. Perhaps recreating it gives you an excuse to just stand still and take the time to really observe it.

For you, what is the most beautiful thing in nature?

I think the freshness and growth. As a human and certainly an artist, it’s important and therapeutic to have a desire to grow and progress (and hopefully improve). Nature never stops doing this and I find that reassuring as I consider myself part of nature. Also, I’m particularly drawn to the patterns you can see in the spread of branches and the number of points on a leaf.

Your Brighton map is a wonder. Can you please tell us about the journey of making this?

I think the map was a project that fell under that ‘describe your surroundings’ concept, but taking the detail to a very high degree. To all intense and purposes, it looks as though you can see every building in the city and far beyond to Shoreham and Worthing. It’s the result of an incredibly painstaking editing process. To give you an example, in a street of 20 identical houses I may only illustrate 10. Why do this? Well, by using this same process all over the map, house by house and street by street, you can make the houses a little bit bigger. All the rooftops and building shapes have been observed and carefully recreated, but because their size is bigger the viewer can decipher the visual information much more clearly than, say, in an aerial photograph. Resident who live on that street can still say “that must be my house” and hopefully buy an art print! Adding moments in history and famous Brightonians from the past also makes the map more engaging and friendly.

Are there any other projects you're currently working on?

Yes, too many. If I’m not careful they can get in the way of paid work. I’ve just finished writing a children’s book. I’ve been illustrating them for other people for years but had this idea running around in my head for a long time. My partner Dörte suggested I just sit down and get it down on paper. I haven’t had it published yet but the few guinea pigs who’ve been kind enough to read the manuscript have been extremely positive. One 12 year old (who shall remain nameless) finished all 160 pages in just a few days. Other than that, I have a folder with over 50 creative concepts ready to roll, from board games to TV show concepts. I just need more time!

Malcolm Trollope-Davis has kindly donated 15 ‘Technature’ gift sets and a limited edition Brighton Map to our Collector’s Edition crowdfunding campaign, which ends on Sunday 12 December. Please consider pledging so we can keep publishing Ernest in 2022 and beyond.

Issue 10 has landed

We're thrilled to announce that issue 10 has gone to print and will be landing on our subscribers' and Crowdfunders' doormats very soon. If you missed a chance to get your hands on a copy during our Crowdfunder campaign, don't worry - you can now order issue 10 or subscribe on through our store page

Cover photo by Dan Cook

As many of you know, our partnerships for 2020 were postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, so we launched a campaign to help us send issue 10 to print. Thanks to your support we raised an astonishing £14,845, which will help us to build a strong foundation for 2021 in these uncertain times.

Thank you for supporting independent publishing and helping us send issue 10 to print - we couldn't have done this without you.

So, without further ado, let’s take a look inside this brand new edition…

INVENTORY

Botanical cyanotypes; trail teas; ocean tapestries; lunar birds; sacred trees; mountain maps; Sheffield knife crafters and moonlit journeys.

MILK OF DEER

When a pair of Swedish newlyweds introduced reindeer to the Cairngorms after seeing striking parallels between the Highlands and their native homeland, little did they realise they were rejuvenating a Scottish herding culture that goes back to the Ice Age. Words: Nick Hunt, Illustrations: Ruth Thorp

BEING NATURE

Lucy Jones, author of Losing Eden, investigates the language we use about the natural world, and how new words and voices are needed in the rubble of the pandemic. Photos: Sam Hobson

GASTROPHYSICS

You’re cruising at 31,000 feet. The drinks trolley beetles past and before you think about it, you’ve ordered a Bloody Mary – a slightly off-piste choice but one you’re craving all the same. As you take your first sip of the salty drink, you look around only to discover how many of your fellow passengers have opted for the same unusual beverage. Kate Tighe talks to leading gastrophysicist Professor Charles Spence about the quirks of this new field of food-related psychological interest. Illustrations: Adam Howling

THE CONTINUOUS PLANKTON RECORDER

This contraption has been compiling a marine tapestry since 1931, and in recent years, has given us a unique insight into our plastic addiction and the health of our oceans. Words: Russell Arnott

TRAIN DREAMS

In the age of flygskam (noun, Swedish: the feeling of climate guilt associated with airline travel, literally ‘flight shame’), many of us are looking for an alternative – helping the environment and investing in our own comfort and idea of journey. Dan Richards recounts his nocturnal adventures and recent renaissance in European sleeper trains. Illustrations: Sam Brewster

OCEAN TRAILS

The 2011 Fukishima Daiichi Nuclear disaster has been long out of the headlines but its devastating legacy is still having a domino effect, as radiation travels on deep ocean currents to new parts of world, including the fragile ecosystem of the Great Barrier Reef. Australian naturalist Paul O’Dowd is closely monitoring this invisible enemy, with the goal of sounding the alarm when disaster eventually strikes. Words and photos: Mack Woodruff

SEA NOMADS

Armed with sunglasses to protect his eyes from the dagger-like bills, Sam Hobson joins the seabirders, a group of scientists on the frontline of Britain’s gannet study and conservation effort.

A CREATIVE PAUSE

During lockdown, photographer Jim Marsden trod the same path every day. The more he walked the path, the less aware he was of walking, and the more aware he was of thinking. The path became his place to pause, and his space to think.

THE ROOT BRIDGES OF MEGHALAYA

Grown over decades from the roots of the rubber fig tree, the bridges of Meghalaya are testament to a living architecture that crosses time and ancestry, as well as the gushing gorges of the Khasi hills. Words and photos: Willem Betts

INTO THE UNFATHOMED

A singular figure who bridged the gap between science and literature, Rachel Carson recognised that “it is not half so important to know as to feel”. Within a decade, she would catalyse the conservation movement, introduce the word ‘ecology’ into common parlance and awaken the modern environmental conscience with her epoch-making Silent Spring. Words: Maria Popova

CHASING AURORA

From crossing lava fields in Iceland to enduring subzero temperatures in Canada’s bear country, photographer Rebecca Douglas reflects on her lifelong obsession with chasing the Northern Lights.

AN OCEAN ODYSSEY

Inspired by a trip to South Georgia, an inhospitable island abundant in wildlife but with no permanent human inhabitants, Russell Arnott explores deserted whaling stations and delves deep into ocean migrations both great and (very) small).

WHAT WOULD GWEN DO?

Whenever photographer Hazel Simcox heads out into the mountains of North Wales, she often takes a particular book with her, not a guidebook, but a memoir. Fern Scott speaks to Hazel about the words of mountaineer Gwen Moffatt, and how they influence her experience, and images, of landscape.

Ernest Journal is 160 pages, perfect bound and printed in full colour on FSC approved uncoated 140gsm and silk 170gsm paper in Bristol, UK.

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Meet the maker: Cut By Beam

One of our rewards for our crowdfunding campaign to send issue 10 to print are a pair of Trail Tea enamel mugs inspired by foraged teas you can make in the great outdoors. These mugs were engraved by Cut By Beam in their Cornish studio – join us as we find out more about the cutting process, their experience of lockdown, and the strangest object they’ve ever etched…

Images by Jenna Foxton

Tell us about Cut By Beam - who are you and what do you do?

Cut By Beam is a laser cutting business based near Falmouth, Cornwall. We’re an all-female team of four. I originally set things up about six years ago – my first workshop was a small, cold, farm building and I had one machine. Now we have four laser cutters and can handle a diverse range of jobs, for individuals as well as small to large businesses. We get to work with some incredibly talented clients - I discover more and more every week!

Take us through the cutting process – please do go into lots of geeky detail, we love that.

The laser cutters do all the cleverest bits but the prep-work beforehand can be quite creative. That might mean discussing ideas with clients, drawing up artwork for them and sourcing materials. We then program the machine with all the details it needs to know, for example the type - whether that’s wood, leather, rubber, stone, glass, enamel, etc, – the thickness and size of the material – from something just a few centimetres wide to over a few metres. The design is picked up from a folder on our server and then we tell the machine where to position the job on the laser bed and how many items to cut or etch. We can cut right through material or just etch or score the surface.

Were there any challenges to cutting the Trail Tea designs?

Enamel Mugs are one of our most popular items – we have an online store where people can order them individually, or we can take bulk orders like we did for Ernest. As we do these mugs all the time, we didn’t have any particular challenges on this job. The difference with etching curved surfaces, and in order to get an even finish, is that we have to rig up a rotary arm to turn as the laser does its work. Each mug has to be put on the machine individually so it can be quite labour intensive as there’s a change-over pretty regularly.

What's the most surprising thing you've ever etched?

Various things spring to mind. When we were based in our last farm building, we were asked to have our laser cutting included as part of a video to help promote the NASS music festival. A team came to make that in our workshop whilst we etched a skateboard for them. It was used to reveal the headlining act for that year.

We've also etched some bird skulls for a heavy metal band’s music video. That was definitely the strangest thing. One of the jobs we’re most proud of was when we made thousands of wooden cards for National Geographic. They wanted them to drop into the Ganges and help them trace the flow of plastic down the river.

Where do you turn for inspiration, particularly when you're having a creative lull?

Ideas can come from various sources but they’re usually from other creative businesses and individuals that we either work with or follow. It might be a podcast, a book or a talk we’ve listened to. A good example from last year was listening to Mark Jenkins, Director of the Cornish film Bait, who talked about how much more successful he felt his film had been because he had been on such a tight budget. Adversity can be the mother of invention and I was motivated by hearing that at a point where we were juggling decisions on whether to invest in a new machine or make existing ones work better.

What have you taken away from the lockdown experience?

We’ve been grateful to have enough work to keep us going throughout lockdown, though things were initially scaled back. We used the spare time to work ‘on’ our business rather than just ‘in’ it which, under normal circumstances, we find a challenge to make the time to do. We’re hoping to put in for B-Corp recognition soon, so we did some work towards that application. Although the uncertainty of the Covid-19 period has obviously been unsettling, we’ve enjoyed the chance to ‘breath’ a little and take stock of what is important to us as a business, which is staying true to our sustainable ethics and striving towards a healthy life/work balance.

Tell us about your work space - how does it reflect you as a team?

There are usually two or three of us on site at any one time. And then one or two working from home doing admin. The workshop is mainly just one large room and we’ve set it up so that we can easily work as a team in what could still be quite a tight space if we hadn’t planned it out well. Everyone is connected via apps on laptops and phones, so even when we’re not physically together we know where we’re up to on any particular job. I would say that our workspace is almost as much an online world as a physical one. We use an app called monday.com to schedule and follow all jobs. This has really helped make things more efficient and is of course accessible from anywhere. At heart, however, we love the physical and practical nature of our work so I would say the workshop definitely reflects us well, with examples of our work alongside our tools, materials and machines. We made quite a few of the workshop fittings ourselves.

Why do you love what you do?

When I left uni, my ambition was to continue to live in Cornwall, have a dog, a Land Rover, my own business, become a World Champion gig rower and have a great work/life balance. That last one is still a bit of a work in progress but I’ve ticked all the rest off. With a company still in its growth phase, there’s always more to be done, but I love my work and the people I meet through it, so I regard myself as incredibly lucky.

To get your hands on our exclusive limited edition Trail Tea enamel mug gift set (£32), designed by Aidan Meighan and engraved by Cut By Beam, head over to our crowdfunding page.

The Waterless Sea

Mirages are “real, but not true”, according to Christopher Pinney in his book The Waterless Sea. Real in that they are genuine optical phenomena (and can even be photographed); but not true in that “the exact nature of what beholders believe they can see reflects, in part, the concerns and anxieties of their times”. Pinney’s book describes some famous examples.

The thirst of the gazelles

Mirages occur when light is refracted by hot or cold air, making things appear in the wrong place. They can be ‘superior’ or ‘inferior’, depending on whether the apparition is above or below the real object. A typical ‘inferior’ mirage is the desert oasis – actually a refraction of the blue sky above. Known in Sanskrit as mrigtrishna – ‘the thirst of the gazelles’ – Lawrence of Arabia regarded these frustrating visions as “an ever-present feature of the desert”.

The elusive island of St Brandan

A superior mirage frequently takes the awe-inspiring form of a ‘city in the sky’ – also called a Fata Morgana after the tricksy Arthurian sorceress, Morgan le Fay. The most enduring of these was the phantom isle of St Brandan in the Canary Islands. Seen many times over hundreds of years, this mysterious landmass prompted four abortive expeditions and appeared on maps from the 1400s right up to the 1750s.

The breath of the clam-monsters

In Japan, shinkiro (mirage) was attributed to the breath of giant sea molluscs. When this purple mist bubbled up from the deep, it hung above the water in the form of a spectral island called Horai, complete with palaces and temples. In China, the island was known as Penglai, and 8th-century poet Ch’ien Ch’i declared that any dignitary making the crossing to Japan would spot “the high houses of the clam-monsters bannered with rainbows”.

Words: Joly Braime. Illustrations: Joe Latham.

Taken from The Waterless Sea, by Christopher Pinney (Reaktion Books, 2018), £18.

This article originally featured in issue 9 of Ernest Journal, on sale now.

Issue 9

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Under the mountain

Woodworker David White carves spoons, jugs and other objects out of oak that he’s salvaged from the abandoned slate mines of North Wales, which has to be one of the most Ernest projects we’ve ever encountered…

Photo by David White

David, how did you come up with the idea to create the Mine Oak collection?

I’ve always been fascinated by the slate mining landscapes of Snowdonia. It was while on a tour of the vast slate caverns that opened my eyes to how much wood was still underground. I made a couple of cups from a sample of oak I retrieved from a mine and realised the colours in the wood were completely unique. From there my imagination ran wild with the idea of weathered wood, the rugged landscape and the industrial heritage of the mines.

What was the condition of the oak that you salvaged?

The oak is very variable in condition – it can be very brittle if it’s been closer to the mine surface (nearer bacteria). The wood that’s deeper underground is more preserved; very dense, and dark in colour. The real alchemy I find in using the wood is the colouration throughout the grain, as the iron brought down to the mine has rusted down over a hundred years and made an iron-rich water that reacts with the tannins in the oak, leaving areas of black flowing through the grain like dark clouds. I never know what will be inside the wood until I remove the surfaces. I’ve taught myself to be very open to what the wood condition and colouring suggests as objects to make with it.

Were there any challenges?

The biggest challenge is getting the wood out of the mines. The tunnels linking the caverns are only about five feet high, and I’m six foot tall. The dense, sodden wood can be 30kg per piece. Once back in the workshop the challenge is to make objects while the wood is still wet, so I can use green woodworking techniques with an axe and carving knives. However carefully I dry the wood, it often splits, so I build the splitting in to my processes now and try to forsee where splits will be so I can ‘cold forge’ fill cracks with contrasting metals.

What inspired the shapes of the jugs?

The rugged, industrial looking jugs are a reaction to both the rough wood, the massive landscapes and the industry of the mines. If you imagine a roughly made slate trolley on rails underground, filled with slate and pushed along in the dark tunnels by a young boy, you see the inspiration I had for the shapes.

What's your favourite item from the collection and why?

As I started making pieces from the mine oak, I read about what working life was like in the mines and quarries of Snowdonia a century ago. There was a huge sense of pride and comradeship among the hard working quarrymen. The men self-selected into groups of five, a ‘Bargain Gang’ who would bid for work each month. In underground and cliff-side shelters called cabans, men rested between extracting slate, talking about politics, singing, reading poetry and of course drinking tea. I created a set of five caban jugs that imagine each member of the Bargain Gang; two rock men, a splitter, a dresser and a rybelwr (young apprentice learning the trade). For the two tough rock men, I used the rough weathered surface of the oak as the jug rims. The colours within the oak looked like a Welsh moorland landscape. These jugs somehow communicated everything I wanted to convey about the eerie landscapes of slate mines.

Do you have any further plans to work with salvaged wood?

The amount of inspiration I found from the mine oak versus what I would have created with fresh, green oak was quite surprising to me. I have plans to make further sets of mine oak functional objects that are even more closely linked to the rugged mountain landscapes of Snowdonia. I also want to look to the coast of north Wales with oak in mind; perhaps shipwreck oak?

Black and white images courtesy of National Slate Museum; other images by David White

Explore more of David White’s work at thewhittlings.co.uk