Pots that tell stories
Perched on the cliffs above the picturesque Nidd Gorge, along the winding medieval streets and stone staircases, is the 1700's stone cottage where Fiona lives and creates her work.
The Historic spa town of Knaresborough (‘Fortress on the rock’) is shrouded in magic and mystery, a place famed for hermits, saints
and sorcery, so it’s not surprising that her pottery tells of folklore, myth and magic, of wise women’s hedgerow remedies,
country lore and miracles. ​​​​​​​​​
Around 1160, a local cave became the hermitage of Saint Robert, who built a chapel by the running waters of the Nidd. Robert was famed for healing not only locals and travellers with the sacred waters of the nearby well, but the wild animals, which flocked to his cave as if spellbound.
300 years later In 1488 and in the middle of a violent electric storm, an illegitimate baby was born in a cave, just as a giant crack of thunder filled the skies. The laugh of this baby was said to silence the storm, signifying the beginning of her powers. Ursula Sontheil was said to be hideously disfigured, the townsfolk shunned her, and when she married Tobias Shipton a local carpenter, tales of love potions and magic were rife.
Pliny the Elder (AD23), a Roman naturalist and author, wrote the first encyclopaedia, 'Naturalis Historia', a highly influential 37 volume book of natural history knowledge of the time. From Astronomy and Botany to Medicine and Art, the book is an amazing insight into the culture and knowledge of Roman life. Pliny compiled the book from over 100 leading authors of the time and claims to have collated some 20,000 facts.
The chapters on Medicine and Magic are some of my favourites. Much of my work is about healing, of hedgerow remedies and the role of women healers in medieval life. Pliny lists and explains the uses of over 900 drugs derived from plants, and although many of the claims now seem both fantastical and nonsensical, lots of that knowledge was the basis of modern research and discoveries. ​
I've been a bit obsessed with the writings of Pliny for as long as I can remember. I think what attracts me is the confident way fact and the fantastical live side by side, information provided by the greatest scholars of the time sit amongst country lore and hedgerow wisdom. Discussions on Art are deemed as important as the most up to date medicinal cures, and the symbolic meaning of flowers takes up as many pages as the movement of the planets.
The book must have been a treasure trove, a bible of awe for those who could read it, and my work tries to emulate the sense of wonder folks might have felt when delving into it’s pages for the first time.
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After marriage, Ursula began to make accurate and incredibly detailed predictions, including the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London.
A prophetess and medieval seer, she made her living as a healer, making balms and tinctures from the hedgerows, and telling the fortunes of those that came to seek her guidance.​
Locals and pilgrims alike were all beguiled by the Petrifying well, whose waters from the spring turned anything it touches to stone, and can still be visited today, alongside the wishing well, known to guarantee your wish comes true...
The illuminated manuscripts of medieval bestiaries are another constant source of inspiration in my work. Compiled of drawings and descriptions of both real and imaginary animals, they read not as scientific fact but of mysticism, Christian symbolism and allegory.
Heavily illustrated to inform the illiterate general public, the images from bestiaries were painted on to church walls, woven into tapestries and carved into stone, as constant and heady reminders of how to live a devout and pious life. As most of the artists would have never seen the majority of these animals, the resulting illustrations are far from realistic.
Leaning on earlier texts such as Pliny’s Natural History, medieval art and word of mouth, they speak of a wild and wondrous world of the divine, where creatures we recognise morph together to form new and spectacular hybrids, to inspire awe and veneration in all who saw them.
