John Melven I

John Melven has made this fab character using pieces of 'midden'. This project and the wonderful works emerging from those who have taken up the challenge are giving me many smiles. If you would like to be involved please get in touch.

Brian McHenry II

Brian McHenry's wonderful; 'Domestic scenes of an intimate nature' inspired by 'midden' items. Each piece Brian has referenced at the bottom of every drawing and included shapes and patterns into the compositions.

Moira Scicluna I

Moira Scicluna is an illustrator from Edinburgh who has been working with some of my 'midden' treasures. Moira has taken elements if the patterns on the pieces of ceramics and used procreate to integrate them into her wonderful illustrations.
I am really enjoying seeing her work and sending midden treasures out to creatives all over the world.

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!