A reconfiguration of selected works from the Sweet Swollen collection with accompanying text for exhibition FAKERS at Thames-Side Studios Gallery, London in 2018, located opposite the Tate and Lyle sugar factory, operative since 1878.*
Concluded with a Subtlety as Follows
sugarlift etched steel and aluminium, brass, cut vinyl
2018
Photo © Scarlett Platel
ON SUBTLETIES OR SOTELTES
be beautiful[1]
an almost varnishy dipped black[2]
be useful[3]
The earliest porcelain figurines were made for the dessert course of grand dinners and replaced the sugar paste figures made since medieval times for royal feasts.[4] These confections were based primarily on the combination of sugar with oil, crushed nuts, and vegetable gums, to make a plastic, clay-like substance.[5] A word as to the quality of their goods: they never had any foreign whatever. (Applause.)[6]
It was possible to sculpt an object out of this sweet preservable “clay” on any scale and in nearly any form.[7]
they are holding
propping up
bent over the bowls, they’re both bent over the bowls
poses that make no sense [8]
Such displays, called “subtleties”, served to mark intervals between banquet courses.[9]
Everyone knows that year by year there is a wonderful increase in the consumption of sugar in these isles.[10] There are infinite variety of flowers, seeds, berries, kernels, plums, and the like; which are, by the confectioners, covered with sugar, and bear the name of “sugar-plums”; which would be endless to set down, and are too frivolous for a work of this nature.[11]There seems no doubt that sugar and its by-products were provided unusual access to working-class tastes by the factory system, with its emphasis on saving time;[12] the consumption per head of the population being vastly in excess of that of any other country in the world.[13]
Concluded with a “sotelte” as follows:[14] That is the outside history that is inside the history of the English.[15]
[1] William Morris, ‘The Beauty of Life’, 1880. The full quote reads: “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”
[2]Sweet Swollen: Interviews with V&A Museum African Heritage Tour Guides conducted by Holly Graham, 2018
[3] Morris, ‘The Beauty of Life’
[4]V&A Search the Collections – Public access description for objects C.2559-1910 and C.2560-1910:Hard-paste porcelain sugar or sweetmeat bowl (lacking cover) with figure of a standing black man, representing America / woman, representing Africa; Meissen porcelain, painted in enamels;1765-1775 (made), 1741 (modelled). http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O123599/figure-eberlein-johann-friedrich/
[5]Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 1985
[6] ‘The Jam Industry’, South London Press, 1901
[7]Mintz, Sweetness and Power
[8]Sweet Swollen: Interviews
[9] Mintz, Sweetness and Power
[10] ‘The Grocers’ Chronicle’, The Southwark Recorder, 1891
[11] P. Pomet, A Complete History of Drugs, 1748
[12]Mintz, Sweetness and Power
[13] ‘The Grocers’ Chronicle’
[14]Mintz, Sweetness and Power
[15] Stuart Hall, ‘Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities’, 1991
Photo © Scarlett Platel
*initially opened as Lyle’s Refinery prior to the Tate and Lyle merger in 1921.
