You always know when it’s coming up to sugar harvest time because the sugar cane sprouts cane arrows. A whole field of them gently waving in the breeze is quite a sight.
Barbados Photo – Cane Arrows
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Monthly Archives: April 2010
Becoming No Ordinary Pottery (Book 2009)
A new book by Goldie Spieler
This excellent read comes from the mouth of an extraordinary lady; the book reads as though she’s telling you her life story. That life narrative takes you through her highs and lows, but also a large slice of how life carries on in Barbados, day by day.
Her world famous Earthworks Pottery is at the core of the story, but she takes off sideways to tell of her early life in Canada, visits to Israel and her new home in Bequia. Weaved through this adventurous story are the trials and tribulation of her ‘Cause’ to move Barbados Pottery onto a firmer footing. This is the story of an artist who becomes an entrepreneur, almost by mistake and certainly without any of the financial or marketing skills required. Her dealings with local officialdom will have produced many hours of laughter on both sides.
So what’s it all about?
This book tells the heartwarming story of a young artist who came to the island of Barbados to recover from a personal tragedy, stayed to follow her Muse, became dedicated to the Cause of preserving the art of pottery making on the island and eventually founded Earthworks Pottery, one of the most successful businesses in the Caribbean, for which she was honored as Entrepreneur of the Year in 1997. But this book also tracks the story of the author’s own personal spiritual journey, which has taken her from the synagogues of her native Canada to the dusty streets of Jerusalem and to a fateful day at a Bajan tent meeting. It’s a remarkable story of one woman’s lifelong journey as an artist and a human being.
Goldie Spieler was born and raised in a traditional Jewish family in Ontario, Canada and graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design. Although originally a watercolor and pen-and-ink artist, she became dedicated to the cause of preserving the art of pottery making in her adopted home of Barbados, a 300-year-old tradition, and eventually built her own Earthworks Pottery, one of the leading craftware businesses in the Caribbean region.
If you’re a local or you’ve visited Barbados as a tourist, you’ll no doubt have a piece of her pottery in your home right now. Many, like our home, show off numerous selections from the hundreds of choices. They’re one of the world’s tenth wonders. If you visit Café Sol in St Lawrence Gap, you’ll see broken pieces of pottery making their outside wall into a wonderful mosaic. Then you’ll eat off an earthworks plate.
• Hardcover: 274 pages
• Publisher: Yeoman House Books; First North American edition (March 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 098226593X
• ISBN-13: 978-0982265932
Service With A Smile – Gifts and Things
The other day I went to Gifts and Things to help my daughter buy a present for her Granny. Gifts and Things is a shop that sells all kinds of gift items for men and women, with a wide price range. I’d say that it specialises in decorative items, but it’s also got a good range of cards and the shop next door, which is part of it, caters for children’s gifts. I’ve always found it to be a place worth visiting, where the staff are helpful, but on my last visit, they went above and beyond the call of duty.
Once we’d been in the shop for about five minutes, a lady came over to offer help. (Brownie point no 1 – helping when needed.) My daughter, who is particular about gift choices, said what she was looking for and the lady suggested a few items and then left us to browse some more. (Brownie point no. 2 – staying in the background after offering help). Finally, my daughter chose the item she wanted. (Brownie point no 3 – no one hovered over us making sure she didn’t break anything; they left that to us instead – and she didn’t.)
But the real gift came when we got to the counter, when the lady asked if we would like it gift wrapped. She waited while my daughter selected a sheet of paper, then wrapped it competently, doing a far better job than any of us would have done. Then she added a wide ribbon around the package. We thought she’d finished, but she hadn’t. She then put the finishing touches on with some fine ribbon which she teased till it curled beautifully. It must have taken her more than 10 minutes and the only extra charge was for the sheet of wrapping paper.
When we thanked her, she simply said: “I like making people’s presents special.” How’s that for great service!
Gifts and Things is located in the Sheraton Centre, Christ Church.
The Two Year Approval Process – From The Ground Up
In Britain it can take only days to get a mortgage approved; in Barbados it took, let me see, two years and counting. Back in 2003 we looked around for a suitable mortgage lender and eventually settled on one of the many banks of Canadian origin in Barbados.
By December of that year, we’d sent the forms off, but we had our first setback when the person we’d been dealing with got promoted and our case was handed over to someone who just didn’t do email – a major problem when you’re doing things at a distance. Finally we went into the bank to sign the paperwork, but still nothing happened. We then emailed our original contact who was able to get things moving.
It took till March 2004 to open our account and as it turned out the paperwork still wasn’t done, with questions continuing to come about land tax (paid), water supply to the land (none, how could there be) and the power of attorney my mother had. I could feel another trip to the notary coming on. Finally, in April 2005, we got the final bit of paperwork notarised – or so we thought.
But another problem surfaced. It turned out that the original land transfer form had been incorrectly filled out and had to be changed by the Central Bank (they keep an eye on all money in and out of the country) and you have to register your funds if you want to be able to take them out again). Apparently, what we owned was the thin air above the land, not the land itself.
Everyone admitted that this was just a clerical error (though why it had taken three years to pick it up I don’t know) and the build was allowed to proceed, though we had a delay of a week while waiting for everything to be processed. But after a period of four years to get from sight of land to start of build, one week’s delay seemed a small price to pay for finally beginning our dream.
Follow the From The Ground Up series:
Barbados Photo Call: Hibiscus and Butterfly
Butterfly on hibiscus, Barbados
