VentnorBlog would like to welcome back ‘Daft Old Duffer’ to our list of contributors and pleased to hear that once in a while he’ll be penning his thoughts to share with our readers.
If you’d like to join our list of merry contributors, do get in touch. Ed
So we’re getting our Arreton Hare back. I’m as pleased as you lot about that, but it has set me wondering -why were we so concerned? After all, it’s just a wooden animal, isn’t it?.
Hopefully you’ll all add your comments later. Meanwhile here’s what I think are the reasons:
It’s wood, it’s hand carved, it’s an animal. Yes I know, but bear with me a while longer.
What about non-wooden?
Suppose the little chap had not re-appeared but instead three volunteers had stepped up.
The first offering to make an exact replica in fibreglass. I think we’d have rejected that pretty smartly on the grounds that it was not a warm material, not a natural material – it didn’t speak to us.
The second explaining that his factory churned out machined replicas of animals in real living wood and exported them all over the world. And we could have one at cost price.
No thanks we would have said,no mass produced items. The Island goes for hand carved and individual.
A human in wood?
And the third offering his speciality, hand carved human figures.
Once again, I suggest the answer would be a refusal. It’s animals for us on this corner.
As a matter of fact human replicas are a bit spooky, a bit startling to passing traffic. Not friendly like a hare.
So it’s got to be an individually formed animal, preferably a hare, in proper wood. And I suggest it’s because such an item contains something, gives of something, that we humans almost subconsciously detect. An aura, an energy, a life force – call it what you will – that comes in part from what shelters in the timber itself and part from the artist/craftsman who fashions the piece.
Human energy
It’s the force that makes us prefer a painted portrait to a good photograph of the same subject – something the artist has put in from himself.
A force that makes us want to fondle a lion and cuddle a cheetah even though we know to them we are nothing but meat on the hoof.
An energy that makes us enjoy a stroll in a forest even though we know we might get lost and suffer from exposure.
But if I’m right, where does this life force, this mysterious attraction, come from? And if I’m talking rubbish, what’s your explanation?
Your answers please, not necessarily on a postcard.
Images: James Pickett
