Archivi categoria: English aromatic landscapes

English aromatic landscapes, Materia Viva in English

The Wandle river – Materia Viva n.9

Each issue of Materia Viva begins with an aromatic material and follows it as one might follow a trail: not only its scent, but the landscape, history, gestures, images and words that the material carries with it.

river wandle mitcham UK

This time, the thread leads to a river: the Wandle, nine miles of water flowing from the hills south of London to the Thames. It rises from chalk, and that explains much of what follows: rain filters for months through the porous rock before re-emerging as spring water, cold and clear in every season.

An entire district of trades grew up around that water. The damp meadows along the river supported mint and chamomile, while lavender grew further away where the soil became more gravelly, and the same stills were used to distil them. Further downstream, mills ground tobacco for snuff. At Merton Abbey, William Morris moved his entire production in 1881, after having the river water analysed to make sure it was suitable for printing with vegetable dyes.

It is a story of water and hands. Of a single current that, over nine miles, allowed very different trades to exist — growers, distillers, dyers — all sustained by the same natural resource: crystal-clear water.

A recent special edition of the e-zine was also devoted to Mitcham peppermint, tracing the history of this aromatic plant through the landscape, people and industrial heritage of south London.

You can receive a free PDF copy, and for further details about the project and how to support it, contact us via the WhatsApp button on the website or by email at professionefelice@gmail.com.

[Trovi la versione italiana dell’articolo qui]

English aromatic landscapes, Geografia degli aromi, Materia Viva in English

The Rivers He Dressed in Cloth

William Morris named his fabrics after rivers. Wandle, Cray, Evenlode, Medway, Kennet, Windrush — tributaries of the Thames, given to printed cloth.

The Wandle was the most ambitious design he ever drew, and the way he spoke of it is worth pausing on. He would give the river its name only if the work turned out well enough to deserve it. The honour was not his to grant. It had to be earned by the thing he made.

And the river is small. He knew it. It is precisely because the Wandle is a modest stream, not a great one, that the design had to be elaborate and splendid. Worth is not measured against scale.

The reason the Wandle mattered to him is plain enough: its water was what made the dyeing possible. The colour came out of that stream. So the naming is not decoration, it is an act of grateful naming.

The work carrying the name of the condition that allowed it to exist. Which is a rarer gesture than it sounds. In the same century, the same river was being consumed by industries that used it without ever naming it.

We followed the Wandle ourselves, for a different material and a different reason, in issue 9 of Materia Viva, the independent ezine about aromatic materials and their environments.