Shells
Next time you pick up a bag of prewashed shells in the tourist shop, spare a thought: each one of those empty gastropod cases could have been a new home for a hermit crab. For anyone who has spent time loitering around rock pools hoping to spot something other than water, these adaptable little crustaceans are regular stars. To them, every periwinkle or whelk shell is a new build. As hermit crabs grow, they have to move up the property ladder in order to survive and protect their soft, twisted underbelly from a legion of predators.
The sacred chank shell at Akkulam
An empty shell can provoke a rush on the hermit crab property market as other, smaller, crabs gather to take a look inside. Some might argue that theirs is a very bad piece of design evolution. But then, look at us. We were hardly born with a semi-detached on our backs, which is probably why we get so elated at the sight of a hermit crab scuttling across the beach wedged inside a new home he’s just acquired.
Molluscs, horseshoe crabs, brachiopods – the beach is full of useful and desirable material. Decorators have been using shells as craft materials for centuries. Victorian craftsmen used them to fashion unique wall art and grottoes for their more bohemian clients. Soldiers posted on foreign shores would collect shells and have them made into ‘sweetheart’ boxes containing a trinket to be sent home to their loved ones.
My plan is to utilise these local ‘found materials’ to make a focal point in the garden. Perhaps not something as ambitious as the 40ft-high homage to the sacred chank shell that devoted disciples have installed in Akkulam, south India. Or even Maggi Hambling’s jaw-dropping 12ft-high scallop installation at Aldeburgh. But maybe just a large gathering of them cemented on to a small wall.
The alternative, and much more useful, measure would be to reintroduce the Dutch East India Company’s neat trick of using them as currency for trade when they colonised the South Pacific. What am I bid for a bucket of empty cockles?
Next week: Knotweed nightmare
The sacred chank shell at AkkulamAn empty shell can provoke a rush on the hermit crab property market as other, smaller, crabs gather to take a look inside. Some might argue that theirs is a very bad piece of design evolution. But then, look at us. We were hardly born with a semi-detached on our backs, which is probably why we get so elated at the sight of a hermit crab scuttling across the beach wedged inside a new home he’s just acquired.
Molluscs, horseshoe crabs, brachiopods – the beach is full of useful and desirable material. Decorators have been using shells as craft materials for centuries. Victorian craftsmen used them to fashion unique wall art and grottoes for their more bohemian clients. Soldiers posted on foreign shores would collect shells and have them made into ‘sweetheart’ boxes containing a trinket to be sent home to their loved ones.
My plan is to utilise these local ‘found materials’ to make a focal point in the garden. Perhaps not something as ambitious as the 40ft-high homage to the sacred chank shell that devoted disciples have installed in Akkulam, south India. Or even Maggi Hambling’s jaw-dropping 12ft-high scallop installation at Aldeburgh. But maybe just a large gathering of them cemented on to a small wall.
The alternative, and much more useful, measure would be to reintroduce the Dutch East India Company’s neat trick of using them as currency for trade when they colonised the South Pacific. What am I bid for a bucket of empty cockles?
Next week: Knotweed nightmare