Midwinter Potato Plate

Some time ago, on a whim, I purchased an old-style cake plate. I liked its decoration of a landscape and I think I might have used once for cakes. Since then it’s been usefully purposed to keep the potatoes in order in their dark cupboard. Some time ago I was inspired by its pattern to write something. Just as something to play with really. So here that is. 

...

It is a landscape drawn in the round. In the farthest distance are trees with bulbous foliage like succulent plants, drawn as if so many caterpillars were piled up and balanced, on boughs which have tough elbow-like angles to them and each of these teeter-tottering poles have a margin of punctuation marks. The trees stand under clouds that are made to have an almost wooden grained texture, but it might be that they are actually mountains topped with red volcanic clouds.

Next to the centre of the scene a faceless wig is balanced upon a pile of pancakes, themselves perched on top of a four-pillared structure the same colour red as several loaf-roofed houses pictured in the distance. Near these, a construction consisting of precariously balanced sections appears to be still standing despite having become half-smothered in volcanic dust.

Oblivious of the complete environmental breakdown oozing towards them as a flow of lava channeled underneath the arches of a bridge drawn with drastically swerving perspective, a couple walk towards us arm in arm. They are conversing, and it is quite obvious that the artist means us to read them as courting. The male figure gestures derisively towards another figure leaning back on one elbow to their left, who is perched on top of a recumbent, green, many legged creature, as if to say, 'Hey, look at this lazy lout, he has subdued this beast but now doesn't know what to do with it'. But the lout ignores them to look beyond, not to the chaos unfolding, but two more people who have paused under an arch in a building to the far right. This couple are quite different in emotional tone. They are pictured as having happened upon the scene unfolding in their full moment of horror, corralled into the devastation by the wall to their left and backlit by the late afternoon sun which causes shadows to fall across the whole scene. We can see that the figure wearing a blue full-length robe has raised its hands to its face, perhaps to call out, or maybe wipe away tears. While the other holds out a short, thin stick, perhaps to indicate their vision, or possibly to attempt some defence, which seems to unlikely to succeed. 

The only other figure in the scene is pictured in the middle distance sitting on a kind of vehicle, preparing to pass over the bridge while driving in front of them a four-legged creature. We can see that a second creature of the same type has already passed over the bridge, possibly leading but perhaps being chased.

This soon to be destroyed Eden is captured within a circular net, crested with equally-spaced white crenellations, beyond which is a desert of lava and then a hedge of twisting roses. Situated beyond this point can only be the end-of-the-world, represented by a repeating pattern of blank-faced four-petalled, pimpernel blooms.