Salted Earth

It’s been a busy few months. In July, I visited Margaret Rowley, who holds the Max Sinclair archive of canal related photographs and ephemera. Max’s son Iain and fellow Ring artist Heather Wastie joined me and we looked through an amazing collection of images. I was fascinated by the images of industrial Droitwich, with Vines Park covered in Victorian industrial buildings (saltworks). I also saw images of the ‘wych barges’ or trows that used to travel on the canal, moving salt from Droitwich to the docks at Gloucester and Bristol for onward travel. There was even a drawing of the special designs of the boats which made me realise how unique these vessels must have been and what a sight it would have been to see boats with sails along the inland waterways of England. The wych barges were a special type of trow, which had a tabernacle mast, so they could pass under the bridges of the canal, but also have a sail rigged to assist their passage. They could sail the river Severn out to sea and even across the channel.

Drawing of Severn Trows (wych barges) from Max Sinclair archive

from the Max Sinclair archive

image courtesy Paul Jones

Image: (left) drawing of a Severn Trow (wych barge) from Max Sinclair’s archive, courtesy Margaret Rowley (right, top to bottom): Saltworks from Dodderhill (now Vines Park), courtesy Paul Jones; Wych Barges on Severn, from Max Sinclair’s archive, courtesy Margaret Rowley

Later in the same trip, I met Paul Jones, a local historian and photographer. He showed me his collection of digitized photos some of which he had collected from the archive of a local women called Nelly Copson, who he had known well and who had told him many stories about Droitwich. The photographs included the Saltworks in Droitwich, salt workers, and the salt products packed up for sale and transport in many forms. It was hard to believe how many people’s lives were tied up in making salt.

Salt workers, image courtesy of Paul Jones

Courtesy of Paul Jones

Image: Salt workers, and salt packers. Photos courtesy Paul Jones

In October, I visited the monthly meeting of the Droitwich Arts Network where I presented my work in progress for The Ring and also carried out my specially designed salt-themed pub quiz, the ‘Brineteaser.’ This went down well with the D.A.N. members, and a serious attitude was made towards winning, although there were a few giggles when I asked them to guess the origin of the proverb: “Eternity makes room for a salty cucumber.”*

Photo by Frank Nagy

Photo by Frank Nagy

Image: Katy reading out quiz at Parks Cafe

Meanwhile, I’ve been at work in my studio in Brighton, experimenting with salt. I’ve been making salt blocks and forms and also placing different objects in salt solution to see what results. The results are often unexpectedly beautiful. Over time, crystals form, transforming the original object.

Image by Katy Beinart

Image by Katy Beinart

Image: Salt crystals in my studio

As I’ve been developing my idea for the Ring next year all this research has combined to form a proposal, which I have now had the good news has been accepted. The final artwork will be event-based, taking place over a series of events in Spring/Summer 2018 which coincide with local festivals. The event will begin with a Canal barge journey from Gloucester Docks to Droitwich, arriving in Vines Park, Droitwich at the St Richards Canal Festival. This journey, using a heritage working boat, will re-enact in reverse the last journey of a wych barge along the Droitwich canal, which according to Max Sinclair took place in 1916, carrying hayricks for the army in France.[1] ‘Bow hauled by men chanting sea-shanties, she was loaded at Mildenham Mill with two hayricks commandeered by the army for feeding horses in France.’[2] 2018 is the 45th anniversary of the start of the restoration of the Droitwich canals, and 100 years since the end of World War 1,[3] and St Richard’s festival will also be celebrating of the life of Max Sinclair.[4]

The barge will be loaded up with salt from all over the world at Gloucester Docks, and then when the salt arrives at Droitwich it will form part of a salt pavilion which along with the newly produced Droitwich salt becomes part of an International salt collection. After the event, this display will be taken to the Salt Museum at Droitwich Heritage Centre where it will be on display over the Summer. In September 2018, as part of Salt Fest, the salt pavilion will return to Vines Park and be loaded back onto a barge for its farewell journey. As part of the project I will be making a film of the journey and a special limited edition map of the salt connections to and from Droitwich, both past and present. I’m looking forward to next year and seeing all these plans come together…

*It’s Russian, if you were wondering.

[1] Jon Axe ed., ‘The Story of Droitwich salt and James Brindley’, The New Wych (Droitwich Canals Trust, 2002), p.27; Jon Axe and Max Sinclair, A Guide to the Droitwich Canals, 2nd edition (Droitwich Canals Trust, 2001), p.55; Max Sinclair also refers to this story in his brief history of the Droitwich Barge Canal at: <https://worcestervista.com/index.php/boats/droitwitch-barge-canal/&gt;

[2] Jon Axe ed., ‘The Story of Droitwich salt and James Brindley’, p.27; Jon Axe and Max Sinclair, A Guide to the Droitwich Canals, 2nd edition, p.55

[3] <http://www.strichardsfestival.co.uk/about-st-richards/&gt;

[4] <http://www.strichardsfestival.co.uk/about-st-richards/&gt;

Over the past 2 years, I’ve been writing up my PhD thesis about the work I’ve done on salt and its stories. I’ve nearly finished the full draft and am planning to submit at the end of the year, and in the meantime I’ve continued to create new artworks, some salty and some not.

Earlier this year, I was asked to undertake a new public art commission in Droitwich, based on its history as a centre of salt production dating back to pre-Roman times.

The project is part of ‘The Ring’, a series of new arts commissions and projects funded through the Canal and Waterways Trust around the ring of canals and rivers that link Droitwich to Birmingham and Worcester. Salt used to be transported by canal to other parts of the country and to the docks for trade. I am excited to find out more about the salt trade and production in Droitwich and the links made to other parts of the world, as I develop ideas for the artwork.

I began with meeting some local experts and visiting the archives in Worcester, The Hive, where I located maps of the area in the late 19th century which show the density of Salt Works in the Vines Park area of the town, as well as photos of the old salt barges and salt workers.

Over the summer I will be continuing the research process and making a proposal for the art work, and for my next stage of research I’ll be hosting a pub quiz called ‘The Brineteaser’ in Droitwich as well as walking the canal along the old ‘Salt Straets’ or salt ways.

For some time I’ve been reading about the earliest type of photographic printing, made using paper soaked in salt, which was then painted with silver nitrate and exposed to the sun (with a negative, making a contact print). While I was in Lisbon, I wanted to try and make salted paper prints using images I’d taken of salinas in Figueria, Aveiro and Rio Maior. The images felt out-of-time, and I felt that using this process would echo that sense of the past and present layered within them. In fact, the process of making the images became about many things, including obsolescence, communication, language, regulation, and travel.

After discussing the idea with Fabrice at Fabrica Braco de Prata he took me to kameraphoto, which turned out to be a digital printing laboratory. Having explained the process I wanted to use they said they only used digital now, and sent me to Lisbon Photographic Archives. Meanwhile, I found my own way to Colorfoto, lisbon’s only source of photographic chemicals (that I could find, anyway) and asked about the chemicals I needed. They couldn’t help with the silver nitrate but a guy in the queue sent me to Camilla Watson and her magical darkroom and studio in Mouraria.

On my third visit to the archives I got hold of Luis Pavao, who was a wonderful source of information about the salted paper process, having tried it himself, but also full of warnings of its problematic nature. From a website, I found that you could buy silver nitrate pens in chemists so I had bought a couple of these – apparently used to cauterise wounds and baby’s bellybuttons – but Luis looked at them kind of fascinatedly and then told me where to purchase proper silver nitrate, from a nondescript chemical company in Av. Dom Carlos. I went there and had to sign various forms, in an old office complete with old chemical jars, and I finally received the precious brown bottle. I won’t even go into my multiple walking tours of lisbon, in search of the right kind of paper.

Trying to source things, I feel I am in the shoes of my great-grandparents again, arriving in strange places, not understanding the language, the way things work like the times of day things are open or closed, the procedures, the rules, the expected behaviours. Going into the Nigerian-run photocopy shop, they give me directions in French purely by landmarks – which I don’t know. I am constantly getting lost, negotiating public transport, using paper maps, as my location services uses up the battery on my phone. This obsolete process I am trying to recreate makes me more aware of the technologies of travel, of journeying, of translation, that we take for granted; how quickly we become helpless without it. Reading Camilla’s copy of The Silver Sunbeam, a book published in the 1860s about the then new technologies of photography, I am drawn backwards in time, and amazed by the careful and thorough detail of the explanations.

Camilla Watson is an unusual figure in Lisbon – an Englishwoman, she has lived and worked in the Mouraria area for years, her studio producing images of Lisbon that are hand-printed on walls, boards, anything she finds. The walls of the district have become a record and celebration of its inhabitants. Using the studio, I love the way people come in and out, and sit and chat in the square outside. I meanwhile have gloves, eyemask, surgical gown and am soaking pieces of paper with salt, drying them, then painting them with the highly dangerous silver nitrate, all in darkness.

Chemical processes, fabrication processes, changing states, is the work in the making or the connections that happen through the making? And is it in part the journeys in space/time to make the making, that develop an understanding of place? So the ‘artwork’ is in part a vehicle for the other/research? The artwork contains these journeys and connections. The process is represented by an ongoing and changing artwork.

The first test works – I expose the paper in the sunny square outside the darkroom with kids playing and a man washing in the fountain. Images appear, faded brown, indistinct, an index of memory. I repeat the process with large sheets and huge, ghostly salt-piles take shape. There are splashes and discolourations. To me the imperfections serve to tell the story of the making of the work, and seem appropriate to the salt-making processes I documented, which sits between now and then, here and there.

I went to the Mercado De Ribiera, Lisbon’s oldest indoor market, around midday on Friday. Some of the stalls were packing up, but the cavernous space was half-empty, anyway. A couple of stalls sold bacalhau (salt cod) alongside products imported from Brazil and West Africa familiar to me from Brixton market stalls. Many of the fresh fish stalls were closed, and the piles of polystyrene crates nearby the open stalls had labels from Norway and the other Scandinavian countries. Markets change, supply changes, demand changes. The oldest reference to a Lisbon Market dates back to the 13^th century, and there has been one in this spot since 1771. Once upon a time, fish was unloaded directly from the fishing boats at the dockside to this market.

The first document related to cod-fishing is dated 1353 and refers to a treaty between Portugal and England governing Portuguese fishing in the North sea. The Newfoundland cod fishing routes emerged at the beginning of the 15^th century, as Portuguese explorers opened up the territory for fishing, and by the mid 16^th century, 60% of all fish eaten in Europe was cod, and would remain so for the next 2 centuries. This diminished after Spain annexed Portugal, and after long wars with the English over control of fishing territories, but Portuguese salt was still seen as essential to the fishing trade and in 1830 the trade revived, with ships setting off with their salt supplies from Aveiro, Figuiera and Lisbon, catching and salting the fish on board, and bringing it back to be dried on open air racks – a complete circle. Under Salazar, the trade was promoted and expanded and the annual departure was an important event, with ‘dozens of ships painted white and bedecked with flags, receiving the blessing of the church’. This rather beautiful and sad Canadian documentary made in 1967 gives an idea of the trade as it was only 50 years ago.

The White Ships (A Frota Branca) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaXl6m85dOY

I’ve been reading Rebecca Solnit’s new book, The Faraway Nearby, which starts out: “stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them…a place is a story, and stories are geography.” The relationship between stories and places, stories and architecture seems to be reciprocal, in that architecture, and place, contains narratives. The structure, space and layout of the Mercado de Ribeira acts as a relic of times past, of a particular moment of supply-demand-trade not just locally in Lisbon, but globally. So the architecture is a memory, and a narrative, but how legible is it? Can we read from this structure past attitudes to trade and migration? And how does it adapt to the present? Like Brixton Market, it is trying to reinvent itself, the top floor now hosting evening events and a Saturday ‘craft’ market attracting a different crowd.

The next day, I went to to the Feira da Ladra market, which is also centuries old, with stalls and cloths laid out on the ground selling all manner of objects old and new. The hustle bustle here was in marked contrast to the Ribeira market, with locals, tourists, migrants, and dealers dealing and just looking. I find old maps of Salinas in the Rio Tejo area, and a leaflet from Aveiro. The maps, which dated to 1898 and 1902, show lots of Salinas along the Tejo, near to St. Iria and Samouco. There are still Salinas at Samouco, now a nature reserve, but the Santa Iria area seems mostly to be motorways and industrial areas today.

The physical space of the markets, and the physical space of the salinas, seem to be remnants and remains, traces or residues. Like the objects for sale in the Feira da Ladra, many of which are now obsolete reminders of past technologies we no longer use. Remains exist also in language. The origin of Salt, the greek work Alas, was initially Als, meaning sea. The Latin Sal is an anagram changed to ease pronunciation. Words which originate from Alas/Sal include Salary/Salario, from the Latin Salarium; Saldo (Portugeuse, Italian and Spanish) meaning balance, bargain, sales; insalata or salad, sausuage (salami, salciccia, salsicha), sauce (salsa, saltsa); and more. The telephone directory of the Lisbon metropolitan area contains 412 people directly named after salt-making and salinas. As Rebecca Solnit writes, ‘Stories migrate, and meanings migrate.’

References:

Kurlansky, M, (1997) Cod. Vintage: London

Neves, R, Petanidou, T, Rufino, R & Pinto, S (2002) ALAS – All About Salt: Salt and Salinas in the Mediterranean. Tipografia Cruz e Cardoso, Lda.

Solnit, R (2013) The Faraway Nearby. Granta: London

http://restosdecoleccao.blogspot.pt/2010/06/pesca-do-bacalhau_08.html

The next morning before leaving Figueira, we pass an old shop with strange window displays combining typewriters, tins, dolls and plastic flowers. Inside Casa Encarnacao (which is a functioning grocery store) we have a coffee and Pastel de nata and the shop guy tells us his story. He has been here 4 years, was born in Angola but his parents came back in 1975 and they have never been back. When they moved to Figueira, they didn’t know anyone and just landed up living in a building in a street, which he later found out his great-grandmother had lived in. ‘Its a small world’ he says.

We set off up the coast hitting a very slow and bumpy road and eventually arrive in Aveiro, again crossing a wide river inlet. The water is channeled through the city with canals, and old Art Nouveau and traditional tiled houses line the banks. Our host Ani lives in one of the few tower blocks in the city and she invites me to come and see the view from the top – which is breathtaking – looking north, a patchwork of endless water-fields, once all salinas, stretching as far as the eye can see. In the distance, we can see fires, which Ani, who is a social worker, says are lit by people who are suffering mental health problems due to the current economic situation. She says her husband and friends are trying to set up a project to run nature walks through the water-fields, to encourage more tourism and growth in the area.

On ground level, crossing the canal to the Marinha do Troncalhada, we visit one of the few remaining functioning salinas out of that maze of shallow water-fields. This is another eco-museum, although it seems to be mainly a productive space with huge mountains of salt lining the canal banks. Joao and Maria, who are friends of Joao who runs it, and they come down to help him as his wife is in hospital. Maria speaks English with a Canadian accent and it turns out she was a returnee, having emigrated aged 9 but returning aged 23 to marry Joao as his family-owned hardware store in Aveiro needed him. She said she always felt a pull between the two, and felt there was something different about her. People emigrate to better themselves, she said, and if they haven’t succeeded, they don’t come back.

There have been salt pans here for 900 years, Maria says, and the fishermen used to take the salt, catch fish, salt it on board, and bring it back. So salt cod became essential to the Portuguese culture and traditions. Today, fish is imported, frozen. Its then defrosted, salted and repackaged as a local and global export. But the salting is not necessary for its preservation, so why continue to produce it? As Maria says, ‘We like the taste. We’d rather have that for our cooking.’ Even as global cod stocks dwindle and the fishing trade may no longer be run by Portuguese sailors, cultural preservation and memory prevail.

Before we leave Aveiro we drive out to the Gafanha Da Nazare, where the bacalhau is produced today in huge warehouses. A rusting sailing ship sits by the dock, now only used for tourism purposes.

I find the company that produces salt cod which is sold in Brixton market. We can’t see inside but Rita who works in the factory, says it is all industrially processed now anyway, its not like the old days of laying it out on racks to dry.

Salt seems to belong to a different time, a slow time of processes that take days, not hours. The slow time of producing place, community, social life. The slow time of sea travel, and the slow adaptation of cultures to each other. Technology allows salt and salt-cod to be produced faster, but it lacks the complexity, or authenticity, of the slower-made product. It allows people to move faster, build faster, but what does this do to the culture of our cities?