Letter from the Editor.
The standing principle.
The Quarter has, since its first number, kept to a principle that is easier to state than to keep: nothing here is shown first. Each object that appears in these pages was made for a member, dispatched to that member, and only afterwards — with permission, and a delay we have come to value — offered to the rest of the readership in a photograph and a short note.
This is not a marketing posture. It is a working method. The practitioners cannot make in front of an audience and also make well, and we will not ask them to. The result is a publication that arrives slowly, on uncoated paper, and reports, in a tense that is closer to history than to news, on what has already happened.
What we did not print.
We have, this issue, withheld three pieces of work. Wickhaven sent a tallow recipe we were asked, gently, not to publish in full; we have included the headnote and the sourcing only. The Foundry returned a portrait of a member who has since asked to remain unphotographed, and we have replaced it with the room. A third piece, from Stonewake, will appear in the autumn issue, when the carving is finished and the carver has signed it.
We do not consider these omissions losses. We consider them part of the work.
The houses, this season.
All seven houses contributed a spread. The Foundry, in its usual economy, gave us a single image and four lines of text; Wickhaven sent six paragraphs and the recipe noted above. Driftwell sent a list of the woods that came down the river over the winter. Garrick Hall sent us the house copy of the next chapbook, with a loose tipped-in note explaining what was, and was not, intended by the colour of the cover.
Ember Yard, between firings, sent a single shard of a glaze that did not survive the kiln; we have reproduced it at half scale on page 51. Stonewake sent the rejected drafts of an inscription, which is the part of the process they regard most carefully. Tidemark sent the sea, in a phrase the editor will not improve.
A note on subscription.
Membership remains by invitation. Inquiries are welcomed and are read by the editor in person. They are answered, sometimes, in time. We do not keep a waiting list; we keep a folder of letters, and we read them at the turn of each season. Those whose interests we recognise are written back to.
Closing, and the next quarter.
The eighth issue goes to press at the autumn equinox. It will, for the first time, include an entry from a house we have not previously named. The members who have already heard of it will not have heard it from us; we will introduce it in print, with a spread, in the customary order.
Until then — we hope the issue finds you well, and finds you slowly.
— The Editor