donkey

There are plenty of surreal objects, and surreal juxtapositions, in the new-ish Ceramics Gallery in the V&A - and an incomprehensible number of china bulldogs.   Indeed, there are some excruciatingly bad-taste pieces - especially 1950s horses (including what I think is a model of Col. Harry Llewellyn on Foxhunter - the kind of detail that my memory dredges up with worrying ease).   And there are shelves and shelves of Staffordshire figures, and Newcastle lustre jugs, and majolica plates, and some quite extraordinary sculpted snakes and lizards on plates - very 3D, after the Adam Fuss snake-created patterns in the excellent "Shadow Chasers" photogram show on the ground floor (where, o flashy bliss, there were a couple of pieces by Floris Neusüss in which he'd left big sheets of photographic paper out in a thunderstorm, letting the lightning expose them.   Must try that in NM next summer ...).   And then some interesting new glass sculptures, and a staircase with semi-translucent green glass balustrades.   This donkey, though; this somnolent Bottom; this sad, sad image of despair, did rather stand out for its capacity to sum up the wetness of the November afternoon outside.