a potted history

Ceramics are amazing in that they record human history more comprehensively and more deeply than any other human-made artifacts, and yet they are still at the cutting edge of technology, being used as advanced materials in many of today's marvels.

So a book about the uses of ceramics eg in catalysis could be really exciting - which is why I agreed to review one such that was suggested to me. Sadly, it is one of the many monographs published these days with zero editorial effort. Thus, there is no general introduction to the field, and it is left to the authors of each of the chapters separately to tell the readers (again) why ceramics are both culturally fundamental and technologically important.

I do wonder why these books are still published at all - the papers could have very well been published as an online collection, a special issue of a journal or some such. If there's no effort to tie them together editorially to produce something that you might want to read in sequence, why tie them together with cardboard and glue?

Anyhow, after sampling too many of the chapters, I pulled together my own potted history of ceramics, as it were, and this is now out in the June issue of C&I:

Ceramic history

Chemistry & Industry Volume 88, Issue 6, June 2024, Page 34

access via:

Wiley Online Library (paywalled PDF of the whole review section)

SCI (premium content, ie members only)

As always, I'm happy to send a PDF on request.

Corded-Ware culture pottery from 2500 BC Source: Wikipedia

care about caracaras

Reading up on the neglected group of raptors, the caracaras, I was rather shocked to find a major skeleton in ornithology's closet. A collector of museum specimens who has several species named after him likely killed the last ten or so individuals of the Guadalupe caracara (Caracara lutosa). So here we have a species not just killed off by humans in general, but by one human specifically. Make that two species, as the bird also carried a parasite not known to use any other hosts.

The important point here is of course the lack of information - Rollo Beck had assumed that the species was still abundant, simply because he very quickly found the group which he then slaughtered. Lack of knowledge and understanding of the important ecosystem function of the caracaras and other raptors and scavengers is also what previously drove that species to the brink of extinction and is still endangering many others today.

So the feature is mainly a call to all humans to support and appreciate their local raptors, including those that have a shady reputation, like vultures and caracaras.

When raptors soar no more

Current Biology Volume 34, Issue 12, 17 June 2024, Pages R553-R555

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

See also my new Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.

Last year's thread is here .

The striated caracara (Phalcoboenus australis) has been described as inquisitive and fearless by Charles Darwin and other visitors to the islands of the South Atlantic. (Photo: kuhnmi/Flickr (CC BY 2.0 Deed).)

films not shown - part 3

My first list of films we're not allowed to see in UK cinemas included films released until 2012, the second one from 2012 to 2020, and I was tempted to let matters rest, but in the post-pandemic harvest of films there were a couple of no-shows that shocked me into launching a third instalment, and a trawl through my tumblr "french cinema" tag brought up enough material to launch a new, post-plague list.

As in the second instalment, there will be just one list of films running chronologically forward, so starting with the earliest ones. I’ll start with films produced in 2021. Within each year, the films that I actually managed to see are listed first. Oh, and female directors are now also highlighted in bold font.

So, here we go again:

Les meilleures (Besties) - France 2021, Marion Desseigne-Ravel, starring Lina El Arabi and lots of unknown young talents. A bit like Westside Story in the Paris banlieue, oh and the rival gangs are all girls. Much as I object to the gang stupidity turbocharged by smartphones, the forbidden love story is really engaging.

Ma nuit (My night) - France 2021, Antoinette Boulat, starring Lou Lampros. A random night-time walk through the city, what's not to like. Don't go looking for a plot though. Caught this one on TV5 Monde

Une histoire d'amour et de désir - France 2021, Leyla Bouzid, starring Sami Outalbali, Zbeida Belhajamor - lovely little boy meets girl story driven by the very energetic girl, although the boy's hangups and tribulations are arguably the main topic. I was lucky to catch it on TV5 Monde. It was also shown at the BFI London Film Festival, apparently.

Fragile - France 2021, Emma Benestan, starring Yasin Houicha and Oulaya Amamra. Again, like in the previous one, a pretty but hopeless boy has to be rescued by an energetic girl, this time on the Mediterranean coast (Sete) rather than in Paris. A cute fairytale with a lot of dancing.

Vous ne désirez que moi (I want to talk about Duras) - France 2021, Claire Simon, starring Emmanuelle Devos. Film about the writer Marguerite Duras.
Une jeune fille qui va bien (A radiant girl) - France 2021, Sandrine Kiberlain, starring Rebecca Marder.

La grande magie (The great magic) - France 2022, Noémie Lvovsky. Nice as an absurd fairy tale from the Belle Epoque. I wouldn't normally approve of the musical bits, but as it's all absurd anyway, people breaking into song at random times just goes with the spirit. For a film coming from a female writer/director, it's a shame that the female cast (other than herself as the magician's wife) are rather marginalised, specifically Judith Chemla and Rebecca Marder whose characters disappear in different ways. Ultimately, this boils down to a film about two blokes, of which there are too many already.

Stella est amoureuse - France 2022, Sylvie Verheyde, starring Flavie Delangle. After Stella, a second film based on Verheyde's own youth, now covering the year when Stella turns 18 in the mid-80s (almost contemporary to my growing up as Verheyde was born in 1967). Delangle is suitably gloomy and enigmatic filling almost every screen and smoking way too much. Not very convincing as a hetero lover though, I kept thinking she should try one of her gang of "copines". And that was before I found out what she did before ...

Divertimento - France 2022, Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar, starring Lina El Arabi, Oulaya Amamra
Un beau matin (one fine morning) - France 2022, Mia Hansen-Love starring Lea Seydoux.

Coup de chance - France 2023, Woody Allen, starring Lou de Laage - managed to catch this in Dusseldorf in a (rare for Germany) subtitled screening. May yet write up some thoughts about it.

La fille de son père (No love lost) - France 2023, Erwan Le Duc, shown at the Maison Francaise d'Oxford. Much like in the director's first feature film, Perdrix (2019), I am loving the sense for the absurdity of life here.

Le théorème de Marguerite - France 2023, Anna Novion, starring Ella Rumpf.
Le ravissement (The rapture) - France 2023, Iris Kaltenbäck starring Hafsia Herzi.
Je verrai toujours vos visages (All your faces) - France 2023, Jeanne Herry, starring Leila Bekhti.
A la joie (Cheers to joy) - France 2023, Jérôme Bonnell. A lockdown chamber piece on love in the times of Covid, apparently. Now available on DVD eg in Germany.

Münter & Kandinsky - Germany 2024, Marcus O. Rosenmüller, starring Vanessa Loibl. A biopic of the star artists of the Blauer Reiter. Managed to catch this in the cinema in Germany, read my review here.

In Liebe, Eure Hilde (From Hilde, with love) - Germany 2024, Andreas Dresen, starring Liv Lisa Fries. Managed to catch this in the cinema in Germany, and it left me rather stirred and shaken. Read my review here. Might still get a UK release, seeing that films with Nazis are inexplicably popular in the UK.

Die Herrlichkeit des Lebens - Germany 2024, Judith Kaufmann, starring Henriette Konfurius. Released in Germany ahead of the centenary of Kafka's death, this film covers the last year of his life and his relationship with Dora Diamant.
Langue Étrangère - France 2024, Claire Burger - supposedly released in Germany on October 24, but haven't been able to find it ... German title: Tandem - In welcher Sprache träumst du? It had a 5/5 review in epd-film, so not sure why it disappeared without a trace within two weeks.
Pauline grandeur nature - Switzerland 2024, Nadège de Benoit-Luthy, starring Déborah François. I've decided I want to see more of Déborah François, so adding her work systematically.
Everybody loves Touda - Morocco 2024, Nabil Ayouch, starring Nisrin Erradi

---

to be continued ... - last updated 17.12.2024

One of our lovely independent cinemas here, not their fault that they're not getting all these films. (Own photo) I used this photo in the second instalment already, so will replace it here as soon as I have a better idea.

a family business

Some thoughts on

Sten Nadolny
Ullsteinroman
Ullstein 2004

Some family histories are so rich in material that one struggles where to start and how to relate it - a memoir, a group biography, a novel? Sten Nadolny (famous in the last century for The discovery of slowness, a novel about polar explorer John Franklin) has chosen to gently novelise the history of the Ullstein family, the descendents of a Jewish paper factory owner in provincial Fürth, who set up a successful newspaper and later book publishing business in Berlin.

Leopold Ullstein (1826-1899), who made the crucial step from producing blank paper to selling printed paper as well as the move from Fürth to Berlin, had ten children from two wives, and all five sons took on senior roles in the company. After the patriarch's death, and when the generation of his grandchildren also developed ambitions in this direction, it led to some family drama during the Weimar years, and after 1933 the Nazis evicted the Ullsteins from their family business. The book publisher and several of the newspapers still exist today, but not in the hands of the eponymous family.

Nadolny moves smoothly between novel writing (presumably leaning on letters and diaries as well as making up plausible dialogues) and straight history writing, filling us in on family events and the broader historical context. Twelve characters get a potted biography of several pages each. Supporting cast includes basically everybody who was anybody in Germany between 1871 and 1933, from Lorenz Adlon (of hotel fame) to Graf Zeppelin.

Cover of the Ullstein paperback edition, which I found in one of the street libraries in Düsseldorf - they have an amazing ability to provide me with the books I never knew I wanted to read. The lovely cover photo shows all 7 children from Leopold Ullstein's first marriage. Their mother, Matilda Berend (1830-1871), died a few days after the birth of the youngest.

In terms of parallels with my family history (which I'm not going to novelise any time soon) the large family and spirit of enterprise reminded me of the (economically less successful) Krefeld Clan and Imig clan, where we had similar numbers of children in the mid-19th century and also some businesses. Although, crucially, we don't have an example of more than two brothers piled up in the same business. Maybe the businesses weren't big enough to accommodate more family members. Neither of them has a Jewish ancestor yet, but the Kauer clan has one here.

some very old molecules

Belated horn-tooting for my latest feature on molecular paleontology which is out in the May issue of C&I:

Molecules of lost time

Chemistry & Industry Volume 88, Issue 5, May 2024, Pages 22-25

access via:

Wiley Online Library (paywalled PDF)

SCI SCI members only.

As always, I'm happy to send a PDF on request.

Mammoths are only a small part of the story but I am loving the one that fills the first page of the article:

a "ladies' violin"

Pirate luthier adventures continued ...

I won't be going on about every single violin that passes through my pirate workshop, but this one is a bit unusual and I already promised I would present it. It's the second of the pair of skylarks I found on gumtree, and it is a tiny bit smaller than the one I presented here. Precise measurements revealed that it is a 7/8 size, and so is the bow and the case. A website on violin sizes helpfully explains:

“A ⅞ size violin is 57 centimeters (or 22 inches) long and is geared towards those with an arm length of 57.5 centimeters (or 22 inches). ⅞ violins are sometimes referred to as the “ladies violin” because they are just ever so slightly smaller than the full size and therefore thought to be more suited towards women (but men can use them too!). Adults may choose to try a ⅞ size instrument if they experience any pain or discomfort when playing a full size, and children who are too big for a ¾ but not quite ready for a full size may also benefit from using a ⅞. ⅞ violins are not very common, so you may have to look a little harder to find one.”

source

Apart from the size it is very similar to the other skylark, has the same label with a different model number, and the varnish is a little bit cheaper but otherwise it looks and sounds ok.

The bridge is very clearly not Chinese, as it is marked "BAUSCH" which is a famous name in the bow-making world, but I'm not sure if that reflects on the quality of bridges or anything else.

In any case, this bridge was also a little bit warped, not as badly as that on the full-sized skylark:

... and I wouldn't have minded playing it in that state for a while, but as I included this one in the bunch of violins I rehomed via freegle, I cut a new bridge for it too. (The warped bridges of both skylarks were very much on the small side, so I'm wondering if somebody went overboard in removing too much material and thus made them vulnerable to bending.) As it happened, one of the respondents to my offer was looking for a violin for a small sized teenage player who had her 3/4 violin stolen, so this "ladies' violin" may actually be just the right size for her.

The four violins I included in my offer have now all left the premises, plus a half-sized Lark which I didn't include because it sounds quite bad and probably can't be improved, but it too found a new family. As I mentioned in the previous entry, the offer led to another violin being donated, for which I also found a new home, so all sorted for now.

Previously in the pirate luthier series:

violin 1) is the one my late aunt had since the 1930s, which got me started. After restoring it in November 2022, I played it almost every day for 14 months, until number 5) showed up.

violin 2) is a Stentor student 1 (a very widely used brand of cheap fiddles available everywhere and still being produced). It has a fault that is probably not worth repairing, see the blog entry on number 3) below. After stripping it of some accessories and spares, I am now inclined to keep it in a semi-functional state to try out experimental repairs, i.e. use it as a wooden guinea pig of sorts.

violin 3) came from a folkie friend who moved away. I put the soundpost back in its place and it has now found a new home.

violin 4) is a modern Chinese one which I bought from one musical friend and sold to another, no work needed.

violin 5) (donated by a friendly freegler) is my new favourite and the one I currently play in folk sessions.

violin 6) is the half-sized Lark which has now found a new home.

violin 7) is a skylark from 1991 which I bought on gumtree for £ 10 and fitted with a new bridge. Good enough for folk I would say. It has now found a new home.

violin 8) is the 7/8 skylark described above

violin 9) is the one which needed a new bridge and a tailgut and turned out to sound quite lovely on the E string. It has now found a new home.

violin 10) is the broken one with traces of multiple repair attempts. I'm still gathering courage to try and fix that one.

violin 11) is the 3/4 sold by JP Guivier & Co Ltd. in the 1950s but may actually be older than that. It has now found a new home.

violin 12) is a full-size Lark which a freegle user kindly donated and delivered after seeing my offer.

ancient Australia

From a European / Western perspective, we're used to thinking of Australia as a new world that has only recently been discovered and settled by our heroic ancestors. Ironically, however, the out of Africa emigration of modern humans that eventually spread around the world appears to have reached Australia a lot earlier than Europe, never mind the Americas.

We still know far too little about the 70,000 years of human history in Australia and the larger landmass of Sahul which also comprised Papua New Guinea and Tasmania. Recent research, however, has yielded insights into likely scenarios how the migration into Sahul may have fitted with the changes of environmental conditions. For the later stages of Australia's hidden history, genetic and linguistic evidence are now coming together to reveal a coherent story. I've rounded up some of these studies in my latest feature which is out now:

Ancient Australia

Current Biology Volume 34, Issue 11, 03 June 2024, Pages R473-R475

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

See also my new Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.

Last year's thread is here .

Aboriginal rock art created by the Wunambal People in the caves at Wary Bay, Bigge Island, Kimberley, Western Australia. The painting shows a Wandjina figure representing a cloud and rain spirit. (Photo: John Benwell/Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0 Deed).)