A new cold war?

I have spent the whole day stripping wallpaper; is there a more soul-destroying task? That has left me little time for photography and all I have to offer is a pot from the conservatory and a Camellia from the garden.

I had rather hoped that the Cold War was but a nasty memory. But it seems as if I might have been over-optimistic, what with Bear bombers frequently testing our defences and today news that the Finns are dropping depth charges on an unidentified submarine off Helsinki. There is a link between our pot and the Cold War as was.


The Camellia from the garden floats on a pool of blue glaze on the upper surface of a ceramic "floating stone" crafted by the Danish ceramic artist Lotte Glob. In 1968, Lotte Glob established a workshop in Balnakeil Craft Village at Durness in Sutherland in the far north of Scotland (the location is shown on the map).

Balnakeil Craft Village lies about one mile west of Durness, within sight of Balnakeil Bay. The collection of brutal concrete buildings was built at the height of the Cold War in the mid 1950s by the Ministry of Defence as an early warning station against nuclear attack. However, it was never commissioned, and in 1964, the camp was used as a base for artists and craftsmen, a role it continues to play to this day.

Lotte is the daughter of Peter Glob the Danish archaeologist most noted for his investigations of Denmark's bog bodies such as Tollund Man - the mummified remains of Iron and Bronze Age people found preserved within peat bogs.