WORKSHOP 16: Lost Earrings and Found Bricks

It all started with a lost earring.
It turned into an adventure that reminds me of childhood excursions into fields, abandoned or empty building ruins, groves of giant trees that made you feel enclosed with leafy walls. It reminds me of the way, in childhood, you could leave your parents' house on a bicycle and return with a head full of mystery from your explorations into the world-out-there.

I put on my dichroic glass earrings, the pair I bought on New Year's Eve a few years back while visiting "the bomb museum" at Los Alamos, New Mexico with friends. There was a gift shop attached to the museum which had art from locals, including jewelry. The fiery colors of these earrings spoke to me mainly for their beauty, but also as a sort of secret joke to myself to commemorate the visit to a museum dedicated to the memory of a bomb, with colors of explosive fire. Perhaps a bit morbid but...for reasons I won't go into here, it was a significant day, significant friends, significant time and I wanted to have a keepsake.

So I put them on and went to the local co-op for groceries. While walking through the parking lot (or car park as we call it here in the UK), I recall flipping my muffler around my neck against the cold and catching my hair in it.

Coming home, removing my hat, muffler and jacket, I found one earring was missing. I was really sad and figured it was somewhere in the car park, lost forever - probably from that moment of flipping my scarf with too much enthusiasm. I cursed myself for wearing delicate, dangly earrings in a place where hats and mufflers and wind are a daily occurence. I decided not to wear them anymore outside, or only wear the kind with security latches! Just another getting-used-to-it thing after living in New Mexico where we wear big jewelry with our denims, and hardly any outer gear.

For two days I often thought to drive back over there and look for my earring, but then told myself it would be futile - either I wouldn't find it or a car would have smashed it.

Three days later, I needed to go to the co-op for eggs. While walking through the car park, I watched the pavement just in case...and, lo! Right there, smack in the middle of the asphalt, where hundreds of cars had driven over and people had walked across, for three days, was that fiery bit of glass to attach to an earlobe! And, although fragile, it wasn't even broken, the ear wire wasn't even bent! In the dark grey of a Scotland winter day, on the grey pavement, it seemed to shout its neon presence. I could not believe that no one had seen it...or that, if they had, they might not have at least picked it up out of curiosity, since it is truly so beautiful and the colors very compelling!

Happily I brought it home and returned it to its partner.


The enboic mystery
Because of this event, on my next walk along the river with Shaka, I began watching the ground, observing everything more keenly, still amazed that no one had picked up my earring. I couldn't help thinking that if it had been lost, smack in the middle of a parking lot in New Mexico - where people are very attuned to intense colors in the landscape, architecture, clothing, art - someone WOULD have picked it up and, if they were a creative person, would have incorporated it into something as "found art" - a collage or another piece of jewelry.

Crossing the bridge with Shaka, I looked down into the water and saw, again, amidst the boulders and rocks under there, a brick that had been worn and rounded with age and currents, and the letters on it that I had noted a few days ago. For the first time I wondered what exactly did the word on the brick say, and why was there a word on a brick? And how old was that brick? And might I be able to find out the mystery of the letters? From where I stood, it seemed to say "enboic". Was that a Gaelic word? I puzzled over it, and on the way home found another brick that had been displaced in a recent flood, this one said, "De?ar", the ? being a splat of bird poop. (Later I found it said Dewar.)

I came home babbling to Bob about words on bricks and we got on the Internet to try to find out...were these old? How old? Were the words the names of the companies which made them, or the companies who commissioned them, or the names of buildings?

Thus began a wee creative adventure that has continued now for over a month. I went back that afternoon and collected the "enboic" brick from the river - a bit of balancing in waterproof boots - and now, in our back garden, I have 35 bricks - some whole partial - with words and bits of words engraved on them, in various colors and conditions.

My name is Michelle and I'm a brick addict.
Shaka is thrilled to see his mommy has finally figured out the joys of rocks (rocks and bricks are the same to him - in fact, he really started all this! Months ago he came home from a walk carrying a heavy beige brick named "Stein" which I had barely noted in his rock collection outside the front stoop. Now I find out it is one of the older ones in brick history here. Stein was a very important name in Scottish brickmaking history.) Now when we walk, we go to either of three areas near the river, where the water is very low this time of year. I pick through the boulders and bricks and lay aside the ones I want, while he plays his usual game of fetch-and-push-a-rock-through-the-brambles. Our walks have doubled in the length of time they take and I get as lost in the fascination of finding words underfoot as he does with his games. I have begun hauling them home in a backpack while he carries a small partial one in his mouth.

More often, we will set out on "just a quick walk, no bricks today" and yet, there we go, like homing pigeons or magnets to steel, back to our brick-foraging haunts. I always end up carrying two bricks home and a partial in each jacket pocket.

It has taken on the quality of an addiction, for me.

I have sorted out that I will need 57 bricks to line an area of the garden when we begin landscaping later this spring. So far I have 35 and, at my spots on the river, there are 15 more waiting for me in little stacks. So far no one else seems to be collecting them, no one has disturbed my obvious hoards. (I think the same people who ignored my earring pass by there on a daily basis!)

I keep going over the same areas each day and am amazed to always find something new...or I decide I do want one, after all, which I had previously passed over. The movement of the river tossles them around into new configurations, and reveals new ones under the boulders. The most exciting days are when I find a word I never found before. I have begun to understand which are more "valuable" in terms of age, names of companies that weren't around long, symbols on some which indicate they predate others of the same name. I count as extra valuable one brick whose "n" is backwards, which tells me the words were "engraved" with moulds and one-letter-at-a-time.

Researching, we have found they are apparently named after the manufacturers and most of them are from the 19th century. There were a few brickworks in our area and up-river - the neighborhood we live in once was a mill all built of bricks.

New Configurations
I also found that there are brick collectors all over the world. They even have an organization (International Brick Collectors Ass'n -- Google it!) and get-togethers where they trade! All most amusing to me. We found there is a lecture later this month at a local council, given by some kind of architectural archaeologist, about the history of the brickworks in our area. So we will attend.

Most of my bricks say "thistle" and I'm still trying to sort out the source of them. "Enboic" turned out to be, excitingly enough, "Glenboig", a company from our area, 1930s. Later I found one that is intact, says Glenboig and has other symbols that date it as earlier in the 19th century.

Some of the bricks I find are so warn down that the letters are barely indented impressions and illegible. Yet, because of the shape and color, I recognize which ones they are. It reminds me of some of the ancient carved stones I've seen in Ireland and Scotland. Only through X-rays can they determine what images used to be there. I have such a new sense of history and how nature impacts it, from all this.

I look forward to laying out the bricks in our garden this spring, arranging the words and colors and shapes next to each other in the most pleasing way. This wee project had added an element of fun and childhood memory to my terribly adult life these days. It makes me feel connected to this place in a new way, it has taken me down research alleys I wouldn't have gone otherwise, and now the neighbors probably call me "the weird brick lady".

I don't quite understand why or how, but this whole thing has helped me with my writing. It's like a wee fire of curiosity and amazement has been lit.

And now those earrings hold even more significance for me. Something about how man explodes things and they are scattered - and then, through imagination and creativity and curiosity, they can be brought back together into a new configuration.

If that's not too far-fetched.

Speaking of fetching, it's time for a walk by the river, says Shaka. Hmmm, I wonder how many "enboics" he can tote in his doggy backpack?

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HAVE YOU FOUND SOMETHING - or has something found you - that helps you link back to those childhood adventures where you became lost in time and space and exploration...and no adult could intrude?

Please tell us about it!

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

Michelle Miller Allen
http://www.greenphoenixproductions.com