Turn out your Pockets/Kindle the Flame Online Community Exhibition Day 4

Here is today’s locally made object for the ‘Turn out your Pockets/Kindle the Flame Community Exhibition.

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‘This is a tilt-top leather table depicting Rhiannon on top of Arberth (Narberth Mound) in the medieval Welsh tale of Pwyll. It’s based on the Victorian illustration that accompanied ‘Pwyll Prince of Dyved’ in Lady Charlotte Guest’s lavish and pioneering translation known as The Mabinogion. It was the work of the artist John Cleal and includes the relevant text in Welsh on the front and English translation on the reverse. I’d asked John (who had, with his wife Lel, founded Workshop Wales in Lower Town, Fishguard) to make this Mabinogi table for me in 1989. This was the year that my biography of Lady Charlotte Guest was first published (co-authored with Revel Guest, Lady Charlotte’s great-granddaughter). It reminds me of the dramatic scene in this tale set in Pembrokeshire – where I live – but it also reflects the sensitivity and skills that were so apparent in John Cleal’s work’.