Art (because I say so): Thames Foreshore, May '05

[tamaranth]

glass, bone, stone, pottery, plastic, iron, shell, alloy, tooth. Collected Greenwich / Wapping, 15th and 16th May.

If anyone is a dab hand at classifying pottery or glass, please do get in touch! Some of this stuff has been in the river for a long, long time.

Of interest (at least to me):
- the huge barnacle in the top right. This is what they scraped off hulls, careening.
- the ?cat jaw, lower left.
- the fossilised coral, just above it
- the irridescent glass, just at the edge of the blue glass area

We also found a tiny, intact bottle, about 2 inches long, half of which was neck. White glass. It's on its way to the other side of the world.

Oh, and if anyone knows a chap called Giles, who works at Selfridges? I have his name badge.

Comments

[damned-colonial.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's beautiful. I love the marmalade best, and the blue glass.

When I was a kid I used to often find sea-smoothed broken glass down along the back beaches of the Mornington Peninsula near Melbourne. The best was the blue glass, but that was really rare. I haven't found any glass down there for years... perhaps there aren't enough shipwrecks to keep up the supply any more.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

The Thames 'beaches' (they're pretty grimy up in London, you wouldn't want to lounge on them) are packed with rubbish. Centuries of it. Not quite as exciting as Cyprus (where I made my first beach mosaic back in March) but there's some fascinating scraps. We were hoping to try the same experiment in Paris, but couldn't find any exposed shore: I don't think the Seine's tidal that far up.

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

nice! could the irridescent piece be one of those glass nuggets worn down?

[easterbunny.livejournal.com]

Lovely! You could try taking it along to one of the Original London Walks beachcombing Sundays - the marine archaeologist that leads them, Mike Watson, is a crack hand at identifying several centuries of Thames detritus. He used to work for the Museum of London. He could tell me within a few decardes of the 2 wine bottle shards I found - one was 1760's, one 1840's (or so he told me).

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

no, it's much older than that, very thin and fragile and looks as though it was made that way. From my observations, glass doesn't seem to wear thin very quickly: it breaks into pieces, but those tend to retain their thickness.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

Coo! I'd be ever so keen to get some of this identified, even if (as I suspect) a lot of it is pretty recent. Would he mind me going along on the walk with stuff I'd found earlier, do you think?

[easterbunny.livejournal.com]

There's no harm in trying - the beachcombing walk I went on in January was 1.5 hours of walk + history, 30 minutes of actual beachcombing (should've been longer, but the tide came in rather unexpectedly), and then he told everyone which pub he'd been in afterwards if people had any questions or stuff to identify - that seems like a pretty relaxed atmosphere to ask about some of your pieces, especially if you started with a few of the glass, a few of the pottery, and definitely the white piece with black writing. He seemed like a nice guy.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

The white piece with black writing is actually the easiest bit: it's a marmalade jar from the early-to-mid 20th century (maybe a little earlier). I think we used to have one at home.

Don't suppose you're planning to go on another beachcombing walk any time soon? (I assume they're linked from the London Walks site.)

Unexpected tides?! Pah. I have software on my PDA to avoid that sort of thing. Hence our two well-timed walks at low tide ...

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

are the edges smooth? or could it be be a bit from a soap-bubble tree ornament (avoids c*********word). The victorian ones were huge

wearing - I think being a liquid glass tends to flow away rather than rubbing thin

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

it's not smooth enough to be anything very modern, and the iridescence reminds me of Roman glass (though I don't think it's that old). Will show it to you some time: it's hard to describe why it feels / looks old, but it does.

Not sure where glass would flow away to, in this context. The older bits of plain bottle-glass are smoothed, but still chunky.