Tools... Yes, that's a nice definition, pure and simple. They're more than that too, they're instances of physical thought. A thing to make/prevent another thing happening. I was thinking about them last year when I made one of the pieces on show at Spode. It's an eel-bob. So what someone would do to catch eels, they'd sew together a clot of worms with strong thread, when the eel bites, it's backward teeth get stuck on the thread. This thing is lowered into the water using rope, but eels can climb up rope, so you have to knot a funnel thing into place so it can't get past. I just enjoy that step by step logic of people learning how to do things, working them out. For other people (or maybe the same people, I don't know), eels appeared out of nowhere, so they thought they must grow from horses' tail hairs falling into streams, an idea like that feels like a sort of tooling up too.

I'd like to visit the garden festival site with you, that'd be nice.