Miscellanea
“Like a melodic system of pure sound in the midst of noises”
On the piano top in the parlour, a bell
jar holds a fragile ‘shell bouquet’.
Beautiful and timeless, shellwork
reflects an era when women of high
society spent their hours occupying
themselves with suitably refined
pursuits. It was commonplace to
make decorative objects such as
keepsake boxes, picture frames and jewellery from shells gathered by the coast. The delicacy with which they are made, displays a deep fascination with nature during a time of great discovery.
Strangers Hall was a house once filled with music, from the days of Dance Master John Boseley and his wife Abigail, there remains a legacy of crafted musical intruments throughout the house. Composer Claude Dubussy once said that ‘music in essence, was made up of colours and rhythms’ and it was this notion that brought to mind a unique correlation between the marks on shells and musical notes for the artist.
The artist’s book ‘Shell Song Elegy’ is the result of her initial experimentation into writing music from the patterns found on the surface of three carefully selected sea shells, which were used to create sheet music. The colours and marks on the surface of shells relate to minerals which were absorbed by the mollusc and excreted through it’s mantle, as it slowly rotates to create its shell though the process of bio-mineralization. these marks were used to create a short passage of music which can be heard at intervals in the Regency Music Room.
The ‘Conchologist’s Gloves’ continues this watery theme through a pair of opera gloves from the golden age of glove wearing, when it was deemed improper for a lady to be seen in public with bare hands. Intricately decorated with limpet shells, pearls and lace, they were intended to adorn the lady of the house when she attended concerts. Inside a delicate shell ring on the gloves’ right hand a poem unfolds, a lament to the beauty of shells and a reminder of the now endangered life forms that lay unheard in our threatened and increasingly warming oceans.
