The Danish Clay Gulag: GULDAGERGAARD

It’s the light that first strikes as different. It often carries a bluish grey cast that colours thingsa a bit like an old reproduction of Van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Cyprus, that’s been up on the wall too long so the yellow has mostly faded and the image rendered mainly in shades of greenish cyan. Then, while your senses, in response to daylight’s waning strength, tell you it must be getting along to dinner time, your watch informs that it’s already past bedtime. And, while pacing around, in the bit between 3 and 4am, you become aware of a lightening of the edge of the sky, outside the big window. Jet-lag offers an insider’s view of just how long can be the Danish day.

Walking to the ceramics centre, Guldagergaard, in the small coastal town of Skaelskor, far to the island of Zealand‘s south-west, the narrow curved path that leads along by the water is bordered by oddly stunted crab-apple trees laden with ripening fruit, beneath which are drifts of tall grasses and reeds that partly hide clusters of wild flowers in muted hues. You recall that Down -Under the wild flowers are mostly white and yellow, not these soft shades of amethyst and garnet, berry and plum that are vividly energised by a vibrantly clear blue daisy form which sadly, once taken to a vase, is fastest to fade and wilt. Ephemeral beauty indeed, perhaps echoing the Danish summer