Tuesday 14 January 2020

Midden



"A 'midden' (also kitchen midden or shell heap) is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, botanical material, mollusc shells, sherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofacts associated with past human occupation."

I collect artifacts from a midden on the North of the Forth, North of Edinburgh, Scotland. I have always gathered as I walked, and now as I walk my new dog daily, the collection is large and growing.
It is the ceramics that I gather mainly and some bits of glass and I like to think of the lives that these objects were part of, right from the person who made it, painted it to the person that chose it, used it and eventually broke it.  I imagine the medicines in the medicine bottles and the people they treated, cured or failed. The teapots and the conversations they overheard . . .

I am no mosaic artist and the last time I gathered a sizable collection I gave them to the local college who incorporated them in a mural at the hospital.

This time I thought I would like to share these little scraps of lives lived, to creatives, writers poets, playwrights, artists, and musicians to set their creative minds to and to see what happens.

So if you would like to be part of this creative endeavor, please email me or message me via Instagram, Twitter or Facebook and I will send you five pieces of 'treasure'.





A little bit of sleuthing and I found the origin of this piece (on the left) one of James M Tod's Ginger beer bottles and it is Seafield Tower, Kirkcaldy that is depicted, wonderful!


3 comments:

  1. Love this idea, I have quite a few of my own pieces of ceramics found on beaches, but I don't do mosaics either.

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  2. So beautiful. I wonder how some old air buds will fare in 100 years?

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