Ian Hornsby

Someone once wrote about the reluctance of the schoolboy to attend a seat of learning... but this feeling was, thankfully, soon dispelled by the appearance of Jum, famed painter and enameller of the Orkney's Standing Stones.

My wife and I were new to the game. Although we had purchased a starter kit, we had only switched on the kiln to see if it worked. We had no other experience whatsoever.

Jum called the register and although only three of us answered, the room seemed to be full most of the time. He expressed his hope that we all had some previous knowledge of enamelling, but when two of us declared our lack of knowledge, there followed an Orcadian expletive and the declaration that one way or another he would make us enamellers before the day's end!

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