Back to Brickfield
If we are friends IRL there is a chance I’ve been chewing your ear about Brickfield this summer. Truth be told, I’m not the only person besotted with this place. Since 2018 this artist-led brickworks has been connecting people with brick-making, material, landscape, labour and heritage.
I think most people when they hear me yapping about brick-making think it’s a little bit random - at least at first. But as I continue the story of Rose and John and Brickfield community, they begin having sparkles in the eyes and the questions begin….
“So where is it again? St Austell?”
“What do they do with bricks?”
“Can anyone come?”
This happens to you when you realise that exploring the lost craft of brickmaking by hand, in the heart of Cornwall’s ‘clay country’, a landscape shaped by the China Clay industry, is a very beautiful and practical way to learn about this place many of us call home.
A few weeks ago, I joined another open day at Brickfield but this time instead of brick-making, I followed Rose and John and focussed on preparing clay. I wish I could say building materials has always been an interest of mine as an ethnographer but it isn’t something I gave much thought until becoming friends with Ellie Birkhead who opened my eyes to an entire universe.
I’m by no means trying to romanticise physical labour. I grew up in a working class family in Poland, where doing things with your hands; whether that’s growing vegetables or building a house; was something I was exposed to from the early age. But it wasn’t until the concept of samu1 in Zen Buddhism that I began to pay attention to what once seemed a mundane task.
Although being in Brickfield is far from mundane, and every part of the process fills me with joy, to me brick-making and working with materials feels like a meditation in action. Whether you’re needing the sand with your feet onto the clay, sieving or covering the moulds with a lineseed oil, there is nowhere else for you to be, but here.
You may also enjoy the introduction to Brickfield:
photo essay: Brickfield
I heard about Brickfield - community brickworks in a repurposed china clay pit - for the first time last year. Since then, the project and Rose, artistic director, keep coming up in conversations. By summer this year, I knew I had to make my way to St Austell and see for myself this “magical, otherworldly place.”
Chop Wood, Carry Water is a project exploring the remarkable power of doing things with our hands, together. It is an ode to labour, heritage, landscape, and community. Each photo essay is an attempt to understand and share how different restorative practices can influence collective wellbeing and serve as a form of meditation in action.
Samu is a work practice, or a dynamic expression of Zen (just like Zen Arts) that is done for its own sake - without rewards or personal ambitions. The “goal” is simply to perform a task with full awareness of the present moment.