They adorn windowsills, conservatories and gardens the length and
breadth of the country, souvenirs of seaside holidays and the freedom
of childhood. Glass, metal, or plastic, fishing floats have always
been irresistible bounty for beachcombers. Their roundness is doubtless
part of the attraction; their shape is pleasing to both hand and eye.
The secret stories they hold - untold but infinitely imaginable -
are linked to that romantic notion of seafaring, which tends to ignore
the dangers faced by those whose livelihoods depend on the vagaries
of the sea.
Exposed to the reality of those dangers all her life, Hermione Lamond
has no illusions about the perils of life on the ocean, and marriage
to a crofter-fisherman in the tiny cliff-edge community of Elgol in
the Isle of Skye ensures her constant awareness of the sea and its
moods. She is nonetheless profoundly appreciative of the beauty of
her surroundings and her young family's way of life.
"What do you do here in the winter?" visitors are inclined to ask.
Mother, shopkeeper, postmistress… Hermione has no need to seek out
activities to fill her time. But she is also a painter of fishing
floats, and has a remarkable talent for the vocation.
Her childhood and early teenage years were spent in Orkney, where
art and sailing quickly became twin passions. Secondary school offered
art lessons and studies in seamanship. The former instilled a facility
for creative drawing, while the latter taught her ropework and led
her eventually into a nautical career. A course at Glasgow College
of Nautical Studies, resulting in the attainment of her Class IV Certificate
in Navigation, included four years of on-the-job training and the
opportunity to travel all over the world on various types of merchant
vessel. Art took a back seat until, during her final training trip,
she met a captain who was using this - his last voyage - to pursue
his own artistic interests in preparation for retirement. The meeting
fired Hermione's determination to pick up her pencils and brushes
again when she returned to dry land.
Marriage, four small daughters and several years later in the Isle
of Skye, Hermione had joined the ranks of beachcombers, bringing home
floats in ones and twos, then in threes and fours as the children
became old enough to join in. The collection grew so large that at
one point husband Colin - with the multi-coloured pile gradually taking
over his croft - threatened to dig a hole and bury the lot. He did
actually inter a good number but, undaunted, his family continued
collecting and now that the 'recycled' floats hold out the promise
of an extra income for the household, Colin has reason to rue his
drastic clear-out!
Hermione had no firm idea of what she wanted to do with her hoard
of floats, and didn't connect them with her still-latent desire to
return to painting until about 1998, when she heard about a chance
purchase by her mother - a fishing float decorated with painted boats.
The link was made and the artist finally had the focus she needed
to make room in her life again for art.
Most of her previous experience had been with pen and ink or coloured
pencils. Creating scenes on the curved surface of a rough and often
scratched plastic fishing float required a different approach. Acrylic
paints seemed to offer the answer, and remain Hermione's preferred
medium today, though she cheerfully admits that her first attempts
were a leap in the dark. Her early designs centred round scenes of
birds and primroses, and she found that some Celtic knotwork patterns
worked well 'in the round'. Gradually, however, she tended more towards
fishing scenes and the theme of the sea. Each design is painted directly
on to the surface of the float, with no preliminary outline sketching.
Even the complexities of the Celtic knot patterns are applied in this
fashion, a task demanding a steady hand!
The boats are all local and accurately represented - Elgol residents,
fishermen and school children recognise each one with its skipper
and crew, who are fathers, brothers, husbands and friends of members
of the community. Birds and flowers still have their place: sea thrift,
puffins, fulmars, gannets, even the sea eagle makes an occasional
appearance just as it does in reality. And reality is also present
in the frequent inclusion of the Mallaig lifeboat, a reminder of the
dangers in the everyday life of a fishing fleet and a tribute to the
vital role played by the lifeboat crews in these small coastal communities.
As the project developed, practical problems inevitably presented
themselves, to be resolved one by one. The acrylic surface was clearly
vulnerable to damp and knocks, so an old pot of household varnish
was unearthed and used to provide some kind of protection. Nowadays,
yachting varnish is bought specially for the job and the finished
article will confidently withstand most weathers and handling. Of
course the floats themselves are virtually indestructible - their
survival along the rock-strewn coastline of the island is witness
to that. Hermione often reassures customers wary of touching the display
of floats: "You'd need a hammer to do them any harm!"
Another dilemma was how to display a spherical object, which needs
to be viewed from every angle and is liable to roll off any surface
that is not entirely level. Once again linking her artistic talents
to her nautical training, Hermione came up with the idea of suspending
the floats, and what more appropriate method than to use traditional
hemp rope and the authentic knotwork she learned at school? This combination
of art and practicality is a central theme in all her work. A 'monkey's
fist' stopper knot below the float keeps it on the rope, whilst the
top exit is packed with cork to keep the rope stable. The corks -
a further nautical connection, Hermione points out - were her father's
idea and admittedly come from wine bottles rather than fishing nets,
but this does make them more fun to collect!
The floats themselves are surprisingly varied in design. The rope
channel can run straight through from top to bottom, or it may be
a horizontal tunnel through the top third of the float. For this type,
the solution is to splice the rope back into itself to form a loop.
A recent find of some small, rugby-ball-shaped floats about 10cm in
length led to a new idea, which is proving very successful. They are
suspended using the same hemp rope, threaded through, then untwisted,
fashioned into a kind of 'cage' round the float and spliced back into
itself at the top. The most dramatic piece of all is a long ship's
fender standing almost a metre high and featuring an all-round seascape
in which the centrepiece is a lighthouse. A special metal stand had
to be made to display this monster and needless to say, it attracts
attention wherever it goes.
From tentative beginnings, with occasional sales through a neighbour's
bed and breakfast establishment and a stall at the local gala day,
demand for the painted floats grew when Hermione re-opened the village
shop and post office in new premises in 2001. This provides not only
a space in which to display and sell her work, but also a workshop
- or at least a small table in a corner, where she paints in any spare
moment she can find. Visitors are fascinated to watch her at work
and the current 'float in progress' is subject to careful scrutiny
by local residents when they call into the shop - whose boat is being
painted today?
Interest is spreading, with increasingly-frequent commissions from
craft galleries and sea-based businesses in the area. A local family
enterprise, running boat trips from the nearby jetty, has a regular
order for custom-made floats that sell well to passengers on their
boat. Hermione was recently asked to supply a gallery in the picturesque
village of Plockton on the mainland. In such cases she will normally
visit the location to get a feel for the atmosphere, take a few photographs
and note the salient characteristics and activities of the place.
This means each outlet receives its own exclusive product, a service
that is proving to be a winner with both proprietors and their customers.
What of the future? For the time being, Hermione has no plans to
make her art a full-time occupation. She thoroughly enjoys her other
commitments, and simply wants the float painting to progress at a
steady pace as her daughters - two are still under school age - grow
up and need less of her attention. She does, however, look forward
to spending more time wielding her paintbrushes in the years to come.
She foresees her regular designs continuing alongside the commissioned
work. Of these - although the Celtic knotwork designs still sell well
- her own preference is for the sea scenes, and her skills in this
area are growing rapidly.
By combining an old nautical craft with an innovative artistic idea,
Hermione Lamond is giving new life to a traditional symbol of the
sea, and her work links the sea story, the community and the float
itself in a circle that has a satisfying completeness about it.