PLEASE NOTE: this artwork is currently in an exhibition. If you would like to buy it, please contact me.
 
Seashore Specimens (viii). ‘Our stay at the coast has been most agreeable and our hosts have made us very welcome. Their young son, William, takes great delight in assisting me in my quest to discover little treasures along the seashore.’
 
This is an original one-off assemblage, in a hand-painted wooden box-frame.
 
In this collection, Clara has included a selection of special little finds that she discovered on her walks with Will. including a handmade paper ammonite fossil mounted on a fragment of papyrus, as well as tiny shells, buttons, lace and a fossilised sharks tooth, (still sharp!). Will is looking very solemn in his photograph: he had been told to sit very still and he was finding that to be an almost impossible task. He couldn’t wait for the photographer to take the picture, so he could go and play.
 
I created the painted handmade paper ammonite fossil using cotton linter pulp.
 
This work was included in A Curious Collection; my 2024 solo show at Sock Gallery Loughborough, as part of:
 
MISS CLARA KNIGHT’S CURIOUS COLLECTIONS: SEASHORE SPECIMENS
'Miss Clara Knight, (1823-1910), was a young lady possessed of a particularly independent nature and an avid collector of all things antiquarian. Accompanying her father, an eminent Professor of Archaeology she travelled the length and breadth of the country - as they searched for wonders of antiquity, Clara compiled treasured collections of her own.
These groups of objects were found in various places along the South Devonshire coastline when Clara and her father were staying as guests of relatives; Mr Idris Knight, and his wife, Cordelia, and their small son, William. Clara found her stay to be ‘utterly delightful’ and spent a great deal of her time happily searching along the seashore and the clifftops for fascinating finds.'
 
Frame size: 45cm x 45cm
Price £420
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