Horological Meandering

Good day, Friends, and Happy Ishtar.

It's been a while since my last toe-tip into WPS. I've now completed my move from the United States to Scotland and purchased two properties, including a cottage which is my new primary home. Both properties are on Rosneath peninsula, if you're curious. One faces Gare Loch to the east, and the other faces Loch Long to the west. To the north are the Arrochar Alps. That's where the Highlands begin. To the west are the Lower Hebrides, and beyond that the north Atlantic.

The county of Argyll and Bute is the ancestral home of the Campbell Clan, which still resides at Inveraray Castle on Loch Fyne an hour away. This is a ruggedly beautiful part of the world, and home to thirty castles. In Kilmartin Glen, it has an archeological site several orders of magnitude larger than Stone Henge, and which contains hundreds of relics from a neolithic, bronze age, iron age, dark age, and medieval past.

I've spent the last four months insulating the cottage. I must commend the Scottish government in this regard. Scotland is committed to home insulation and works fast and efficiently to deliver. It provides generous grants to eligible homeowners. It even provides partial grants to re-paint walls once insulation work is finished (!). Pay your taxes and get effective public service in return. How radical.

Next up is renovation. The cottage was built around 170 years ago (some time in the 1860s). My intention is to fit it out with live grain and solid Jacobin oak everything (doors, floors, shelves, etc.) and accent it all with black wrought iron fixtures. I'm working with Scottish designers and manufacturers, and with sustainably sourced woods. The one exception is the ironsmith who's designing and building the book towers and brackets for suspended book shelves, and a balustrade and rail for a newly-built staircase. He's from Ukraine, and he's skilled, proactive and fast. He's designing it all in a floral theme for just the right touches of whimsy. I'll be applying paints that contain crushed olive stone so the walls will be finished with a naturally coarse, suede-like texture. Finally, I intend to re-wild the garden with flora from the area's stunningly rich micro-climates.

My hope is that the restoration-cum-renovation will be harmonious in three directions: the first reaching into the past so that it looks like the installations have always been here; the second reaching into the future so that in 170 years time the property will feel 300 years old without anything noticeably of the 2020s; and the third digging deep into the present and place by celebrating the cottage's semi-rural natural setting.

I have a nice Italian interior designer who lives locally helping out. Since I'm taking most of the creative decisions, she serves as my project manager and fixer. The work is scheduled to conclude by the end of June, by which time I'll have my library installed and artwork mounted.

As some may recall, part of this transition involved the shedding of things that had become superfluous. I decided to keep my library and art (sic). I chose to let go of my watches to free up my mind for other creative and more fulfilling pursuits. So from August 2022 to date I've sold 20 watches and have gifted another ten. Now, after a breather, I'm in the process of selling another 12 and want to end up with six in a box, with maybe a few odds and ends in a bedside drawer.

One of the six is a project with a British watchmaker. We began chatting idly around 12 months ago, with no specific purpose in mind. It turns out that he and I have much in common. So around the time my selling began, I asked him if he could tweak his ongoing work to accommodate a one-off for me. He agreed. He's since shared a series of photographs and videos of work in progress, of which the photo below is one. I'm looking forward to receive it whenever it's ready. As is my new pace of life now, there's no hurry.

It'll be a nice way to bookend my most recent foray into collecting.

With best regards to all.

Rosneathian

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